The Wandering Wolf
by Lordban
Summary: Four years after the Doctor was lost at Canary Wharf, Rose Tyler, scarred and transformed by the Master, continues her travels in the stead of the Doctor, with friends new and old, with hopes she'll find the Doctor again soon, and with the drums. Adventures between S3 and S4, sequel to Walk a Mile in the Doctor's Sandshoes.
1. Prologue - Time Crash

**A/N:** Everything you will be reading in this story belongs to someone else, alas!

This story is a sequel to _Walk a Mile in the Doctor's Sandshoes_. The prequel will be referenced throughout the story, but it will not be imperative to have read it to follow this story. All that is strictly necessary to know here at the start is that this story plays with the idea of Rose Tyler being left behind in the Prime Universe in the place of the Doctor, who is trapped in Pete's World at the end of the battle at Canary Wharf.

Rose has been left to fend for herself and to fill the Doctor's role in his absence. She has discovered that she had unwittingly granted herself a few abilities when she looked into the Heart of the TARDIS, but more importantly, she has begun to discover just how heavy the weight the Doctor bears on his shoulder is – especially when part of that weight is the Master, who very nearly succeeded to take over all of time and space… until a Bad Wolf interfered.

I'm not writing in my first language, and the series haven't been popular enough to justify bothering a beta, so I'll ask that you please pardon my English.

Enjoy the ride!

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf  
Prologue. Time Crash**

* * *

As she leaned back against the TARDIS' console, Rose wished she could have said she were alone. Technically, she was, as long as one realized that was an incomplete sentence; Rose was alone with the sound of drums, beating in her head, dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun-dun, her fingers tapping alongside it, tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap, never-ending drums that echoed in her since one of the experiments of the Master had worked better than he'd intended it to, dun-dun-dun-dun, tap-tap-tap-tap-

"Enough!"

But the drums didn't relent; they never did. And Rose let herself slide down along the console, shaking and hugging herself. She trembled violently. It didn't matter that the Master had ultimately failed; there was no going back from what he'd done to her, how he'd transformed her, dun-dun-dun-dun, how he'd even grafted some of his and the Doctor's cells onto her in his attempt to transform her into a living, breathing receptacle for the Time Vortex, his ultimate instrument in his quest to gain mastery over all of time and space, and in so doing he'd altered her in ways she'd never have imagined possible, making her very different from the human she'd once been, and not just because her eyes were gleaming gold or the short hair that had regrown since her surgeries had gone entirely white.

Even though the TARDIS was currently unmoving relative to the Earth, Rose could experience how she really was rotating along with the planet at a speed of roughly a thousand miles per hour, tap-tap-tap-tap, how the planet was rotating around its sun at sixty-six thousand miles per hour, the sun rotating in its galaxy at nearly five hundred thousand miles per hour and the galaxy itself hurtling at a speed of over a million miles per hour – and that was just one of the simpler senses that had been awoken in her.

She could see timelines with much greater ease than before. Her connection with the TARDIS had become much stronger, a result of her telepathic abilities having greatly improved. Her already sharpened human senses had been drastically augmented. At times the sensory impulses were nearly overwhelming, and even when they weren't, nothing changed how you look at yourself more than suddenly being able to see every pore and little imperfection on skin like every image you saw of you was constantly under a powerful magnifying glass.

And of course, she could hear the drums, the drums, the never-ending drums echoing in her mutilated brain and resonating across all of time and space where the Time Vortex had regenerated the regions of Rose's brain which had been removed by the Master in his attempt to ensure he'd have a compliant instrument, a tamed Bad Wolf. And there was no running from the drums, the never-ending drums, only learning to live with them, dun-dun-dun-dun, or letting them destroy her, tap-tap-tap-tap, destroy her, like they had must have made the Master go insane before her.

Rose snapped back into action, in an attempt to run from the drums, and also with the faint hope there was some way the TARDIS could help her, somehow dampen the drums – but for that, she had to work on reconstructing the TARDIS first, without much experience doing it and the drums now interfering with the guidance the old girl could give her. So of course, she made a mistake a few seconds in, pulling the wrong lever at the worst possible time.

The TARDIS lurched violently, including a relative 360 degrees turn accompanied by the blaring of alarms and a dazzling mauve display. Rose scrambled frantically to undo what she'd just done, which seemed to at least stabilize the time ship.

"I'm so sorry, old girl, I didn't mean to" she breathed. And then she jumped with surprise when she heard someone else.

"What just happened?" a man's voice said. Rose lifted her head just in time to watch the blonde man bump into her, dressed in a cream and red-coloured cricket outfit, coat and hat, and-

"Is that a stick of celery on your lapel?" she blurted.

"Are those prisoner clothes?" the man replied sarcastically. "I'm the Doctor, by the way."

"You're the Doctor" Rose echoed plainly.

"Yes, I'm the Doctor."

"You're the Doctor."

"I'm the Doctor – are we seriously doing this?" The man frowned. "There's a stranger in my TARDIS, a TARDIS which, by the way, looks and feels totally wrong, somebody's screaming in my head, you look like you're half unfinished and the universe is going bang in five minutes, not the best time to meet the fans – how did you get in here anyway?"

"My question to you" Rose snapped back. "And come off it – _you_ are the Doctor?"

"Yes, I'm the Doctor, yes! Are we going to do this again?"

"As long as is necessary for you to stop saying you're the Doctor!"

"I _am_ the Doctor!"

Rose's nostrils flared. "And he complains because we're going in circles."

"What does it matter to you? Isn't it every sensible human's dream to finally meet with me and get to spend time inside the TARDIS – inside my TARDIS, in fact" he said, his voice trailing, and then he glared at Rose. "My TARDIS! What did you do to my TARDIS? Did you hurt her that badly that she'd scream that way? And how could you do anything to my TARDIS anyway?"

" _The Doctor's_ TARDIS, as it happens" Rose hissed.

"That's what I said!"

"You're not the Doctor!"

"Love the bit of variation" the man snarked.

"Love the portable snack, very practical" Rose snarked back. "And no, sorry, I know the Doctor, and as weird and out of place as he can appear in different regenerations, there's just no way he went and pulled off- he went and pulled off…" Rose's voice stalled as she properly looked at the man, who suddenly grinned.

"I know who you are" he said happily.

"You do?"

"I do."

"Who am I, then?"

"Not someone I have time to waste on" the man dismissed, grin fading as fast as it had showed up. "There is something very wrong with my TARDIS and I have to do something very, very quickly, and it would help," and the man's voice rose, "it really would help if there wasn't some skinny, screeching idiot rambling about how I can't be the Doctor when I'm standing right there in front of her!"

"You don't remember me" Rose said, and the man gave an exasperated sigh.

"Of course I don't remember you! Did you really think I would bother with every single one of you I come into contact with even if they happen to know more than one of me?"

"No, that's how I know you aren't my Doctor" Rose said, her voice shaking. "You don't remember me. He never would have forgotten me – he as good as sacrificed himself for me," and now Rose's voice was rising, "so quit it, stop it, stop pretending, stop claiming you know who I am and _tell me why the hell you are on this TARDIS!_ "

"Why don't you start by telling me what you did to it?" the man said, whipping specs out of his pockets and putting them on. "And I'm not talking about the desktop theme, even if it looks horrid. It's worse than the leopard skin!"

Rose blinked. "Seriously? And I'm not just talking about the desktop themes – you're putting on brainy specs? That because they make you look cleverer?"

An alert blared, stopping the man from responding. "Oh, that's bad. Level five" he said, running to the monitors, Rose following and looking over his shoulder. "Indicates a temporal collision!"

"That doesn't sound really good" Rose noted clinically.

"Of course it isn't! It's like two TARDISes have merged, but there's definitely only one TARDIS present. And stop screaming, whoever you are!"

"Two TARDISes."

"You're a bit slow, aren't you?"

"I'm a stupid ape" Rose snarked. "And you're the Doctor."

The Doctor groaned. "Changed your mind again."

"The other Doctors I knew were friendlier" Rose said with a scowl.

"I'd have remembered meeting you before and-" The Doctor's eyes widened.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Here it comes…"

"But I've met you before!" the Doctor exclaimed himself. "1969, you appeared out of nowhere in front of a very unfriendly Time Lady that had made herself look like a stupid and shallow blonde human girl of no consequence-"

CLACK!

"You slapped me!"

"You deserved it!"

"This is a waste of time" the Doctor said with frustration. "I need to fix the consequences of your stupidity, not worry about your temper when I speak ill of your little sister, or girlfriend, or whatever your relation is. Look at what you've done! The TARDIS is about to blow a hole in the space time continuum the size of…" He turned the monitor towards Rose. "Well, actually, the exact size of Belgium. That's a bit undramatic, isn't it? Belgium? Not a very good reason to keep screaming in my head if that's you, old girl, although, to be fair, you're first in the line of fire."

Rose groaned. She picked up the sonic screwdriver that had appeared slotted on the console and held it out. "You wouldn't happen to need one of those?"

"Nah, I'm fine" the Doctor dismissed.

"Wonderful. Nothing like going hands free, is there? It's like 'hey, I'm the Doctor, I can save the universe with a kettle and a bit of string, and look at me, I'm wearing a vegetable!'"

The Doctor whipped off his glasses and got in Rose's face. "Who do you think you are, Miss I'm-so-stupid-I-almost-remade-the-TARDIS-into-a-paradox-machine?"

"That was the Master!" Rose yelled in the Doctor's face. "And it's not like you can blame me for not knowing how to fix the TARDIS properly, Mister-I-threw-her-manual-away-in-the-first-place-because-I'm-so-clever!"

The Doctor glared back. "Your version of the TARDIS is my TARDIS, in the future."

"Yes" Rose hissed.

"You killed me and stole my TARDIS."

"No!"

"You're just saying that!"

Rose groaned. "God, you were a piece of work when you were this you."

"Excuse me from being slightly miffed after realizing I'm talking with my murderer in my future!"

"You're not _dead_ in the future!" Rose shouted, "not that you didn't give it a good try, switching places with me because you thought I'd be the one to die. Thankfully you didn't, but you're stuck in a parallel universe, leaving me behind to deal with all the messes you normally handle, which includes trifles like the last of the Racnoss, illegal Judoon experiments, a mummy full of extra-terrestrial kit, a Plasmavore, a Dragon, New Earth quarantined after a deadly virus killed most of it, a man who turned himself into a life-leeching monster while trying to gain eternal youth, Carrionites, Weeping Angels, the end of the universe and of course, cherry on top, your old buddy the Master, who found nothing better than spend a year vivisecting me until I've become a part-human, part-Time Lord, part-who-knows-what-else-monster who can't stop hearing the damn drums!"

The tirade gave the Doctor pause. He looked at Rose seriously. "You're fighting the Master."

"Fought, past tense" Rose snapped. "We won, I think. At least she's neutralized for the foreseeable future. Got a few bits and pieces of him living inside me and I think they're slowly turning me insane. Who in their right mind likes the drums?"

The Doctor was spared having to answer that when another alarm blared. "Level ten, that's really bad."

"How bad?" Rose grated.

"Very. Two minutes to Belgium."

"And exactly how bad is Belgium?"

"Nothing much, just a black hole big enough to swallow the entire universe."

"So what do we do about it?"

"That's why it's bad, actually, I have no idea" the Doctor admitted. "End of the Universe with an extra bit of paradox thrown on top to make it irreversible, really, since you won't have known future me if the universe dies today."

"Can we focus and think of ways to counteract the creation of a black hole the size of Belgium?"

"You mean 'can I', don't you, I can see you're completely out of your depth here."

Rose groaned. "Is rudeness inseparable from getting your big Time Lord brain in its working state?"

"And what exactly do you expect me to do?" the Doctor burst out. "End of the universe, Belgium swallowing everything, ninety seconds left!"

Rose sighed exasperatedly. "This is a nightmare" she said, fingers starting to drum on the console.

"This is what happens when incompetents get their hands on a TARDIS" the Doctor countered. "Try to rebuild it, don't bother with the shields, my TARDIS' and your version of my TARDIS' timelines accidentally collide, huge implosion, black hole Belgium, end of the universe, and I can't properly concentrate because somebody that absolutely cannot be the TARDIS just won't stop screeching in my head!"

"How about concentrating on stopping an implosion the size of Belgium!" Rose snapped. "Like exploding another Belgium, for an example?"

"Like that makes any sense!" the Doctor snarled. "To cancel out an implosion you'd have to know the exact amount of energy to release in an equal explosion, and all we know is, is… Oh."

"Yeah, the _exact_ size of Belgium."

The Doctor grinned. "That's actually brilliant."

A mournful tolling made itself known.

"What now?" Rose said with a scowl.

"Oh, nothing too terrible, just the Cloister Bell" the Doctor said as he broke into a flurry of activity around the console.

"What does the Cloister Bell mean?"

"End of the universe is imminent, but no big deal, I've got this covered." More switches and levers were pushed and pulled. "All I have to do is vent the thermal buffer, floor the helmic regulator, and fry the zeiton crystals. Hopefully that will also stop the screaming in my head."

"You keep mentioning that. Is something wrong with you?"

The Doctor didn't reply; he moved around a little bit more, and ended up pushing one last button, causing the time rotor to flash, shaking the TARDIS again for an instant. Then he smiled smugly. "There. All done. Still got the screams, but they didn't come from the-"

He stopped, looking at Rose with wide eyes. "It's you. You are the one screaming."

"I'm not" said Rose.

"You wouldn't realize it – part-Time Lord, and that's the part that's broadcasting its pain for anybody that can pick it up."

"Oh…" Rose swallowed. "And… do you hear the drums?"

The Doctor shook his head. "It's only you. And not the reason why you scream. Part-human, part-Time Lord, there's even a bit of the Time Vortex inside you – it's not possible. You shouldn't be alive."

"Lots of people tell me that" Rose groused, and a new alarm blared.

"That's the TARDISes separating" the Doctor informed her. "I'm sorry, I can't stay and help you with this. I won't even be able to remember it."

"Yeah, that's because you're not in your own time stream."

"And you're a human living my life when I'm gone."

"Yeah, I'll explain that another time we meet."

"And now you've even stopped the Master."

Rose gave him a mirthless smile. "I think another me did that; certainly wasn't this one."

The Doctor replied with a genuine smile. "I'll take back what I said the last time. I don't need to hope I hurry back any longer. This universe is in good hands. Yours."

"It's not if the drums turn me insane" Rose replied with a scowl.

"You'll hold on" the Doctor said confidently as he began to fade. "You just can't stay on your own, _that_ will drive you crazy. Find someone, Rose Tyler. Find someone."

The Doctor vanished, leaving Rose alone with the sound of drums, and absolutely no intention of finding someone right now. This was April 1969, shortly after Missy had originally activated the Paradox Machine, and Rose had a large number of things to consider, starting with identifying what events in the past had been changed as a result of the paradoxical timeline that had been discarded – but that would keep until a bit later, continuing the work on repairing the TARDIS would keep until a bit later. Right now, there was only one thing Rose wanted to do, one thing she wanted to try to distract her mind from the constant pounding of the drums. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. If nothing else, Rose could always try to run.

"... yeah. I think I fancy jogging. I'll just go change... and I'll run."

Fortunately, the TARDIS' transformation by the Master hadn't resulted in deleting the rooms important to Rose, which definitely included the wardrobe. One of the racks carried all the clothes the Doctor had used to wear in his earlier incarnations, and the young woman was relieved to find that one hadn't been touched by the Master.

That rack also carried a blue pinstriped suit, familiar in cut, yet never worn in that colour by the Doctor, not that Rose could remember. She went to the suit, and ran the back of her hand slowly on the fabric, trying her best to shush part of her brain that was arguing against cooing at clothing.

"You're also waiting for him to get back, aren't you?"

Rose gently pushed the suit aside, giving herself better access to an article of clothing that was familiar to her as well, and well worn, as far as Rose remembered: her first Doctor's black leather jacket. The young woman hung the jacket off, and brought the inside lining to her face, trying to catch any remaining scent from its owner... and breaking into a hacking fit of coughing.

"How did you pick up such a stinking smell?" she ended up choking out, with an accusatory glare at the piece of clothing she now held at a distance. Then she sighed. "I'm talking to clothes. Not a very good sign. Don't think I remember hearing the Doctor talk to clothes. Do clothes like drums? Drums aren't made of cloth, not unless there's something terribly messed up with the maker's culture. Then again, you're skin and not bones, aren't you?..."

Rose shook the jacket gingerly. And a banana fell off.

The young woman groaned. "Oh, now, that's just unfair. I'm not even sure I can even digest a banana right now, not after-" She blinked. "Oh, right, bigger-on-the-inside pockets. Which I don't have anymore. You're hired, jacket!"

Black pants, a black long-sleeved shirt and black running shoes in her size soon joined the jacket, Rose insisting for herself all the while that resemblance with the style of her first Doctor was entirely fortuitous.

Rose dressed up, and hung her prisoner clothes on an empty rack. Then she ran.

* * *

Rose didn't pay much attention to the looks she'd attracted while she was running at random through the rain-soaked London, letting the layout of streets and the flow of circulation dictate the course she followed, until she ended up in a lane in Shoreditch, drenched and too exhausted to keep forging on, leaning against a grimy wall opposite a junk yard – which may or may not have served as a hiding place for a couple in their thirties who slunk out of it thirty-one point sixty-one seconds after the wheezing Rose's back had hit the wall.

"Ian, look!" the woman said to her companion, who crossed the lane in a few quick, long strides.

"Are you alright?" the man asked with clear concern, and Rose looked up at him.

"'m fine, go 'way" she wheezed, the last thing she wanted right now being company. Of course, the bloody man had to narrow his eyes in some kind of recognition and-

"You're not human, are you?" he said calmly and very matter-of-factly.

Rose groaned. "Lemme guess, eyes're wron' colour."

The man exchanged a look with his companion, who had now also made it across and seemed to share her companion's concerns.

"She looks exhausted, the poor thing" she said.

"'m exhausted" Rose mumbled. "Good exhausted. Still hearin' the damn drums, jus' don' care right now. Go 'way."

"No, I don't think we shall" the man called Ian said in a tone that brooked no argument. "Barbara, would you mind nipping over to a phone box and give UNIT a quick-"

"NO!" Rose cried out loudly, before she realized her concerns were unfounded. "Right" she mumbled. "April 1969, Doctor isn' dead."

"The Doctor is in danger?" Ian said with evident alarm, and Rose noticed the conclusion the man had jumped to, far too quickly. She let out a sigh.

"'ready saved 'im. Y'know the Doctor."

"We know the Doctor" Barbara replied. "Does he know you?"

"Long story."

"You can tell us about it once we've got you out of the rain" Ian said, "you're going to catch your death out there."

"'ready caught me" Rose mumbled, but neither Ian nor Barbara pried, and the pair supported the young woman on the way to their flat…

* * *

 **A/N:** Wanted to write Ian and Barbara in nearly since the start. Here we go! And don't be surprised if you see adventures entirely out of order… ^^


	2. I - Inferno (Pt 1)

**A/N:** Still don't own Doctor Who. Still sad.

This story is inspired by the Classic Who serial "Inferno", written for the Third Doctor.

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf  
I. Inferno – Part One**

* * *

Barbara was taller than Rose, and the young woman floated in the pyjamas lent to her while her freshly picked new clothes dried, but the night clothes were thick and brought about an intense feeling of warmth which helped distract Rose from the drumming in her head. It didn't hurt either that Ian and Barbara were very kind; and absent the Time Lord, former companions of his were the best company Rose could have presently hoped for.

Of course, she'd never heard about them, but once they were seated in front of a low table in the living room, the couple made no difficulties telling Rose their story when prompted.

"We were teachers at Coal Hill Secondary School when we met the Doctor – still are, as a matter of fact, they were kind enough to hire us back when we returned a year and a half late" Ian began retelling. "When the school year started in 1963 we got among our new students a brilliant young lady, a Susan Foreman, remarkably bright, but sometimes she made strange remarks." Ian chuckled. "Once she said Britain would adopt the metric system in the near future."

"In two years" Rose interjected. "Granddad hated it, but we get used to it eventually – I was born in 1986" she said, hoping it wouldn't trigger a question about her hair.

"You're from the future!" Barbara said, but instead of the surprise that usually accompanied such words, the woman's face had lit with delight. "Born in England, then?"

"Born here in London" Rose said wistfully. "Born human."

"Well, Susan wasn't, and looking back, with all the clues we had we should have been able to guess she was alien" Ian said, "but instead we thought it had to do with how she was being raised by her grandfather alone and may have lived in a literal dump – in that junkyard you saw us leaving, as a matter of fact. We followed her there one day, and there we saw a rundown Police public call box."

"The TARDIS" Rose blurted, and Ian smiled.

"You're familiar."

"We've been traveling together for a few years, she and I."

Barbara looked at Rose in surprise. "You've been traveling with Susan?"

"I meant the TARDIS" Rose said, idly drumming her fingers on her forearm.

"We'll have to ask you about it later" Ian said. "And I suppose you can guess who we met once we snuck inside the box."

"A silly Time Lord" Rose said with a small smile.

"Don't know about silly" Ian replied, "but a grumpy and rude old man."

"And not ginger."

"And not ginger?" Barbara repeated with puzzlement.

"These two are kind-of the constants with the Doctor; he's rude, and he's not ginger" Rose said, before her eyes widened. "Oh. He never told you he can regenerate, did he?"

"He can what?" Ian asked, baffled.

"Time Lord trick, they're a fascinating species" Rose said in a rapid-fire voice. "Most of the other species, you kill them, they stay dead, but Time Lords? Nuh-uh, they cheat, turn into a brand new person. Same basic personality, different packaging. Can change genders, can change habits, definitely change hair, can regrow chopped off limbs during the first fifteen hours, and if they're the Doctor, they're _never_ ginger."

"Well, he looked very much the part of a grandfather" Barbara replied. "But you're telling us it wasn't his real face?"

Rose started to absently drum her fingers on the low table. "What's wrong with not having one single face to grow old into? Besides, if you're going to live for a thousand plus years, keeping the same face and quirks throughout is kinda boring – except for the gob, you never get bored of the gob, other people get bored of the gob."

"The Doctor wasn't _that_ talkative" Barbara protested.

"He was young? If he was a toddler with only a couple hundred of years behind him, he might not have had all that much to say."

Ian sighed. "Even when he's not here, the Doctor keeps finding new ways of surprising you."

"Not always in a good way. A younger him just helped me out of a tiny fix, but he had to be insufferably arrogant throughout and to keep telling me I'm stupid in many different ways" Rose said tartly, the drumming of her fingers growing more insistent. "He's so going to get a piece of my mind when we meet again."

"At first he was kind-of an ass to us too, actually" Ian said with a small smile. "Technically, he abducted us. Before we knew it he'd sent the TARDIS in flight and we found ourselves somewhere in a very primitive era. We manage to extricate ourselves out of a war between tribesmen, we move again, he pretends the TARDIS is damaged and he can't bring us home."

"He's been known to miss his landing zone by a few thousand miles or a hundred years" Rose replied with a small smile, still drumming.

"He literally couldn't choose where the TARDIS would go next back in those days" Barbara said tartly. "And he even lied to us on that occasion. He'd taken out a vital piece of machinery himself, and had to lose it in the middle of a city full of Daleks." Neither of the couple noticed Rose's shiver.

"We had to get another local species to go to war with them to recover that little piece of equipment" Ian added. "The Thals, they were called, the second of the species that could be found on Skaro."

"They called themselves the cult of Skaro" Rose said, her gaze wandering.

Taptaptaptap. Taptaptaptap.

"Why are you doing that?" Barbara asked, wrenching Rose out of her memories.

"Doing what?"

"That drumming of fingers on the table."

"Because I can hear the drums, all the damn time" Rose said sombrely. "Little gift from the Master."

"The Master?" Ian asked, and Rose scowled.

"Another Time Lord, completely bananas – and not in a good way." The drumming of her fingers intensified. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Maybe you-" Barbara started, but Ian cut her off with a headshake.

The only sounds for a few moments were from the sipping of tea and from Rose's fingers, relentless in their tapping.

"Your jacket wasn't really fitted" Barbara ventured eventually. "Where did you pick that up?"

"Doctor used to wear it before he last changed his face" Rose explained. "Rest of the outfit is my stuff, or at least mine-ish, but it really matches the rest of what he was wearing back then. Little attempt at distracting myself from you-know-what. Anyway," and the young woman's voice trailed, "if I'm going to stick around and fill the role of the Doctor, I figure I might as well look the part."

"You might wish to consider a jacket in the same leather, but smaller."

"Nah, I'll just shrink this one a little bit when I get around to it" Rose drawled. "Of course it's going to be a little tricky, what with the extradimensional pockets, but I think I'll manage."

Barbara looked a bit bewildered at that. "If you say so… And you do sound a bit like the Doctor."

"It's only going to get worse as the years go by" Rose said with a grimace. "And most of me is only twenty-four." She sighed. "I'm going to be a nightmare if I ever reach nine hundred."

"That's… a long lifespan" Ian remarked.

"With my lifestyle, I would be satisfied with reaching twenty-nine."

Ian chuckled. "We know what you mean. There were quite a few close scrapes during our time travels. The Daleks were perhaps the worst."

"You're only saying that because we had to flee rather than visit the Empire State Building" Barbara quipped.

"Hey! I liked the view from the top floor!"

"Remind me about that on occasion" Rose mumbled. She noticed the looks Ian and Barbara gave her. "Well, once the TARDIS is repaired I'll have to go and take her for a test drive. There's no rule saying I have to do it without a passenger."

"You're offering us to travel with you" Ian said.

"I am, yeah – you guys were the Doctor's first companions, you'd know what you're doing, so, the offer's open, I guess" Rose replied.

"It depends on whether you can control your destination or just hop around at random like the Doctor" Barbara said with a smile.

Rose gave her a look of disbelief, and sought Ian's eyes. "I'm afraid you've heard Barbara right both times" Ian corroborated. "The Doctor literally had no control over where and when we landed back when we travelled together."

Rose snorted, and then proceeded with full-on laughter. "No way!" she managed; "And I gave him lip when he missed his target by a continent or a hundred years!"

"By how much do you miss your targets, then?" Ian asked, looking every bit as amused as his wife.

Rose sobered up instantly. "Oi! I'll have you know I do _not_ make navigation errors!" she protested.

"You've never missed your mark, not even once?" Barbara prodded.

"It wasn't my fault when I did" Rose groused, drumming with her fingers again. "Sometimes circumstances get in the way between me and my intended destination."

Barbara winced. "That sounds like the Doctor."

"The Doctor can't manage a direct link with the- with the-" Rose stopped and slammed her hand on her forehead. "I'm an idiot. I just ran across half of London when there's already another version of me here who's never met me. What day is it?"

Ian grinned. "That's a time traveller's question if there ever was one. Today is the twenty-second of April."

"Which means, since that wouldn't be a paradox, young me will be running around London for the next eight days" Rose groused.

"You could stay here for that long" Barbara offered. "Longer if you need to. A friend of the Doctor will always be welcome in our home."

"Well, I'm not going anywhere until I can fix the TARDIS, which, by the way, I hardly know anything about. I don't think the Doctor who lives in this time period can either, I remember he was exiled from his planet for a time. Maybe the Time Lords took the TARDIS from him too."

A telephone rang, interrupting Rose's musings, and Ian rose. "If you'll excuse me a moment."

Rose did her best to try and tune out Ian's half of the conversation – augmented senses came with new challenges in respecting the privacy of others. Of course, she could always focus on the-

"Shut up!"

A concerned Barbara rose. "Are you alright?"

Rose looked away in shame. "Just the damn drums. Sorry, I should be better at controlling myself." She sighed. "I need a distraction."

Ian's head appeared in the doorway. "Is everything alright?"

"Weren't you on the phone?" Rose blurted; this time, she let her head drop and hit the low table.

"Don't worry" Ian said kindly. "As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you'd come and listen in on the conversation – it's from the commander of UNIT."

"And probably the guy who ordered me chased after for thirty-nine years" Rose groused, and Ian quirked his eyebrows, prompting another grouse. "Alright, as far as he was concerned, he thought I'd killed the Doctor in another timeline."

"But you didn't."

"I was framed. So? Phone?"

The pair made their way back to the hall, where the phone sat on a three-legged table close to the door. Ian handed Rose the extra listener, and picked back up the receiver.

"Alright, Brigadier, I'm back" Ian spoke. His interlocutor replied in a crisp voice.

"Again, my apologies for the disturbance, Professor Chesterton. I would rather not have disturbed you, but as I was saying, we've got a rather urgent situation on our hands, and the Doctor will not be back for ten days at the very least. I could do with consulting someone with your kind of background, both in subject of choice and type of travels."

"I suppose it has to do with our history of traveling with the Doctor" Ian remarked. "I'll have to point out Barbara and I could only try and make conjectures."

"You are a science teacher, Professor Chesterton, with more experience in extraordinary phenomena than anybody else I could summon here at the moment, and I've got a very unusual murder on my hands, complete with a scientific mystery that cannot be explained conventionally and government pressure to get it sorted within the next seventy-four hours. I'd like to requisition you for that duration – just you, it's really your skillset that would be of most use, and since you have a guest at home it's probably better if your wife stays."

Rose tugged at Ian's sleeve and rolled her eyes.

"One moment, please, Brigadier" Ian said, and he covered the speaker with his hand.

"If military guy deigned to describe the problem I might have an idea or two" Rose pointed out.

"Actually, I was going to suggest you come with Barbara and me. It would get you out of London, and you're probably more knowledgeable than the sum of us two."

Rose gave him a flat look. "You're actually suggesting I work for UNIT."

"Consult for, not work for. And it's probably your better option - if you're anything like the Doctor, you won't be able to stay inside a house for an entire week."

"Yeah, been stuck in one place long enough recently" Rose mumbled, "and I didn't have a constant pounding in my head. Alright, I'll come."

"Excellent." Ian removed his hand from the speaker. "Brigadier?"

"Yes, Professor?"

"I think you might be interested in involving our guest, actually. Her name is-"

"Doctor Wolf" Rose supplied.

"Doctor Wolf", Ian repeated with a light frown. "She's a friend of the Doctor and a time traveller from the future. She'd likely be able to help a lot more than I would be."

"And if she is a time traveller, I'd like to meet with her anyway" the Brigadier replied. "Very well, I'll send a vehicle to pick the pair of you up, they will be at your door within the hour. You'll want to pack for five days."

"I'll ask Barbara if she wants to come as well, since she's not going to be tied down by our guest" Ian pointed out.

"Then she can join as well if she so wishes, but it's really you and Doctor Wolf I'd like to have here – I can't really use a history teacher. Hopefully you'll make adequate substitutes for the Doctor, with or without your wife. I'll be seeing you tomorrow morning. Lethbridge-Stewart, out."

The Brigadier didn't wait for a response before hanging up, and Rose and Ian exchanged a look. "Packing for you might be a bit of an issue" the man pointed out. "How far is your TARDIS?"

"Bit too far, but that's not an issue, I'll dry the clothes I had on me and sonic them as needed. And knowing my version of the Doctor, I've probably got a lorry's worth of random stuff in my pockets – like I said, jacket used to be his."

"That might prove convenient" Ian said with a smile. "I'll go and ask Barbara if she wants to come."

* * *

Barbara, as it had turned out, would have been interested had it not been for the Brigadier's dismissive comment, which Ian had been embarrassed to relay, and had pointedly replied she wasn't keen on putting up with that kind of manners for four days. She quickly helped Ian pack while Rose was busy drying her clothes and shrinking the jacket, and saw the pair off with an offer to provide their visitor with a wardrobe for when she'd get back, which Rose declined, thanking Barbara for her kindness. Rose had then given Barbara a key for the TARDIS, telling her where the time ship could be found in London. And off she and Ian went.

The night-trip towards the north of England was an unsettling experience for the young woman. She saw far better in the dark than she remembered being able to, but the addition of the car's displacement on top of the other sensations of motion Rose now had to put up with threatened to make her sick. And to Rose's annoyance, the sound of drums actually helped her cope with that.

The pair arrived at a closed and fenced research site early in the morning, and were brought straight to the temporary headquarters UNIT had set up in the main building, which Rose could see served as both research complex and housing for a massive drill she could faintly feel digging well below their feet, kilometres and kilometres down.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was a distinguished-looking gentleman in his early middle years, tall, fit and sporting a thin black moustache. The man rose from behind his desk to greet his visitors, shaking hands with both.

"Professor. Doctor. How do you do?"

"How do you do?" Ian replied in kind.

"Man with a gun commanding lots of men with guns" Rose replied tersely, and the man raised an eyebrow.

"Not keen on military types?"

"I'm a bit like the Doctor in that regard" Rose replied, "and speaking of whom… Like Ian told you, I'm a time traveller, and specifically, one coming from the future, and from the Doctor's future. The less anybody knows about me, the better."

"Calling you 'Doctor' is going to feel perfectly natural" the Brigadier replied with a faint, sarcastic smile. "I'll have to ask a few questions about you all the same, but they can keep a bit, we are working against the clock."

The man returned behind his desk.

"Late yesterday afternoon, one of the technicians was beaten to death with this wrench" the Brigadier explained, and he held out an in-tray supporting the object, its handle blue, the head coated in an irregular layer of burnt substance Rose could smell used to be organic.

"Lovely" the young woman commented. "Let me guess, it was found near the body, and you know who it belongs to."

"It does, it belongs to a drill-head rigger named Harry Slocum. We're still looking for him."

"Lots of places to hide around here" Rose noted, "and he'd know the lay of the land."

"That is one of our problems."

"Do we know anything special about Mister Slocum?" Ian inquired.

"Seems to have been one of the most popular men on the complex, Professor" the Sergeant who had introduced Rose and Ian supplied.

"There's something else" the Brigadier said, holding the tray out as far as he could. "Try touching the wrench."

Ian made for the object, but Rose was faster, already holding her new sonic screwdriver. This one had a ruby-red head in the familiar silver casing, and whinnied the same way when the young woman activated it while the three men looked curiously on.

"Seventy-six Celsius degrees" Rose noted. "Must have been bloody hot. How many hours exactly since it was found?"

"That would make seventeen hours, Doctor" the Sergeant answered.

Rose scanned the wrench again, then she looked up and grinned at the Brigadier. "Congratulations, it's an alien."

The Brigadier quirked an eyebrow. "That's not very specific."

"Well, it's not necessarily alien in origin" Rose admitted, "but if it's been out in the air and has been cooled off for seventeen hours, it means it was at a temperature well past its melting point. And _that_ means something modified the wrench's molecular structure so it would withstand higher temperatures without melting, which requires tech that won't be available on Earth until the second half of the twenty-first century. Means you've either got a time traveller, an alien or a hidden lifeform from Earth involved in this."

"You're a bit more voluble than the Doctor, Doctor Wolf" the Brigadier said with a thin smile, and he looked at Ian. "Thank you for bringing her to UNIT's attention, Professor. I have a feeling this investigation is going to be easier than it would have been with our mutual friend."

"You're welcome" Ian replied with a wry smile. "I have a feeling I might not be of great use."

Rose was now scanning the handle of the wrench. She grimaced. "Not a single trace left behind. Either the murderer cleaned up after themselves, or any organic matter they left behind was burned away."

"That would have been too easy" the Brigadier said sarcastically. "Benton?"

The Sergeant snapped at attention. "Sir?"

"Tell the patrols to intensify their search, will you? I want that man Slocum found before noon."

"Right away, Sir."

The sergeant left, leaving the Brigadier, Ian and Rose alone.

"What is the nature of this project, Brigadier?" Ian inquired.

"Project Inferno? First penetration of the Earth crust. Apparently there would exist a thin layer between the crust and mantle underneath our feet, filled with a previously-unknown type of gas named Stahlman gas."

"And doubtlessly named after a Joseph I'll-get-filthy-rich-from-this Stahlman" Rose remarked acerbically.

"His name's Eric. I suppose you could say the man has a bit of an ego" the Brigadier replied with a thin smile. "He's certainly caught the interest of the British government, as it seems the gas would have a very high energy yield, high enough to make nuclear power generation a waste of money in comparison. Since you're from the future and don't know about the gas, I suppose this project is going to end in failure" the man concluded, and Rose frowned.

"Time doesn't really work like that. This isn't a fixed point, anything could happen, and the future would adjust" the young woman explained. "If this works out in the end, I might suddenly remember a significantly different timeline from when I grew up, with Britain controlling the best energy source on the planet. Speaking of which, do you work with Torchwood?"

The Brigadier quirked an eyebrow. "Torchwood?"

Rose shrugged. "Never mind them if you never heard of them, their destruction _is_ a fixed point. It doesn't matter how they get there."

"Nevertheless, I'll need to ask a few questions about them now that you've mentioned them" the Brigadier stated.

Rose plopped herself down into the seat opposite the man, and started to drum her fingers on his desk. "Brigadier, there's one thing you must keep in mind while I'm here" she said in a quiet, chilly voice. "I'm from the future – specifically, from thirty-nine years into this planet's future. I don't have a way to know what UNIT are supposed to learn or not learn in all that time beyond what I gleaned from my own interactions with my time's UNIT, which really doesn't give me much to work with. Better I say as little as possible, and if I ask about something you don't know, better you forget I asked. Time will always be able to deal with you not knowing about this or that topic, but it can't compensate for everything; you knowing about the wrong topic might cause a dangerous paradox – the world-ending type – and I'm sure you'd rather avoid that."

The Brigadier looked at Rose sharply. Then he turned his attention to Ian. "Does she actually know what she's talking about?"

"Apparently she's got a much better grasp on time than the Doctor does, or at least a better one than he did when we travelled together" Ian replied. "I think it's safer to accept whatever restrictions Doctor Wolf thinks should be placed on us than to ignore them."

The Brigadier studied Rose for an instant, his expression indecipherable. "Very well" he said eventually. "I suppose you'll be interested in taking a look at the operations ongoing here, while my men keep searching for Slocum."

"I'd like to catch a bit of sleep first" Ian replied. "We didn't come here by the best of roads, it's not been a restful night. And in my experience, you don't want to tackle this kind of challenge when sleepy."

"Perfectly understandable" the Brigadier replied. "How about you, Doctor?"

"Superior physiology" Rose replied with a grin. "I'll be fine for a little longer, can get some Zs later." Ian looked at her through narrowed eyes. "Seriously, I'll be fine, and anyway if I tried to rest now I'd just keep wondering about what's going on here in-between swearing at not being able to fall asleep."

"Alright, then."

"Just keep going down the same corridor, you'll get to the control room" the Brigadier supplied.

"Thanks."

"You'll probably need papers to introduce you to Professor Stahlman's team."

Rose dug a UNIT pass out from one of her pockets and flashed it. "I'll manage" she said with a tongue-touched grin, and she left the temporary office and its baffled tenant.

"Where would Doctor Wolf have got a pass _I_ signed?" Lethbridge-Stewart asked. Ian smiled at him.

"Brigadier, she's a time traveller. For all we know, you signed it in the future."

* * *

Rose was rather pleased with herself at the little trick she'd just played. Digging through the Doctor's pockets had brought up a lot of baffling things, but the Doctor's old pass, with psychic paper for the photograph, had been a great find. Plus, she had to admit she was rather enjoying being called the same he normally was.

Someone wasn't enjoying Rose entering the control room – an impeccably coiffed middle-aged man in a suit, his mouth surrounded by a short trimmed beard. "And I suppose you're working for the special advisor UNIT is bringing in?" the man said with clear annoyance at her.

Rose levelled a flat look at him. "Try and be a little more sexist, would you? I'm the special advisor."

"Let me see your credentials, then."

Rose flashed him the UNIT pass. "No need to ask who you are, you're Professor Joseph Stahlman."

The man glared at her. "My name's Eric."

"You'd think you know your own name" Rose replied with a thin smile, her fingers lightly drumming on the pass. "And who are your better-tempered company?"

An elegantly dressed, strict-looking blonde woman spoke up. "My name is Petra Williams; I am Professor Stahlman's assistant. These gentlemen are respectively Sir Keith Gold, the Executive Director of this project," she gestured at a tall, thin, concerned-looking man in an elegant suit, "and Mister Greg Sutton, a consultant on drilling operations brought in by Sir Keith all the way from Australia" and she gestured at a broad-shouldered man wearing light colours and a red and yellow cravat. "And who might you be?"

Rose couldn't resist. "I'm the Doctor" she said with a grin, and she heard a grunt from Stahlman.

"Doctor who?" Petra asked.

"Doctor Wolf, consulting for UNIT."

Rose had caught the Australian man's attention. "What's your specialty?" the man asked pleasantly.

"You probably all know UNIT gets involved when there's a suspicion of abnormal phenomena going on, which has proven to be the case in the murder we're currently investigating on this site" Rose replied in an equally pleasant tone, rather relishing the uncomfortable looks that showed up on her interlocutors' faces – except for one of them.

"There's been a murder?" Sutton said sharply, attracting an equally sharp response from Stahlman.

"The deed of an idiot who is getting apprehended as we speak. There's nothing to be concerned about."

"Pay attention, Joseph" Rose chided. The irritable man was prevented from retorting by Sir Keith's question.

"Are you working in the same field as the Doctor who has been consulting with us during the past months?"

"As in fields, plural, yes."

The man smiled brightly. "Then we're very fortunate to have you. The Doctor is a brilliant mind; if you're anything like him, his absence will not hinder our efforts."

"We'd be fortunate if we still had one less busybody around" Professor Stahlman snapped, and he looked at Rose. "Speaking of which, don't even think about delaying this project."

"Don't need to" Rose said offhandedly, "there's already two things that will do that for me."

"Are there?" Stahlman said fiercely.

Rose nodded. "One, you've got a murderer on the loose with the ability to overheat metal to temperatures higher than five thousand Kelvin, rearrange it on a molecular level so its new structure can withstand the heat, and can still wield the metal to brain someone in rather savage fashion. Class, if any of you know of something that can do this, raise a hand." The young woman's own hand shot in the air; of course, nobody else followed suit.

"That takes care of that, so, nobody interfere with my investigation, please. And two", and Rose gestured at the heavy electronic equipment worked by technicians, "because your own computers are raising an alert about something going wrong right at this very instant."

Stahlman started and went to his own monitors, scrutinizing them with a hissed "I hate busybodies."

Rose ignored that and turned her attention to the other three. "Where was Harry Slocum working and what were his tasks?"

"Maintenance for the drill coolant systems" Sir Keith supplied. "As we told the Brigadier, he was working on re-securing one of the pipes and reported success the last anybody really paid attention about what he was doing. He had to have left through here."

"I'd like to take a look at that pipe."

"And conduct more sabotage?" Stahlman accused from behind his console. "You're obviously here to keep me away from ultimate success."

"If I ever feel the need to develop an ego, you've got the job" Rose said mockingly. "I don't care if you succeed at your thing or not; I'm here to ensure nobody else gets hurt because you're greedy and impatient."

"How dare you?"

"Experience."

Sir Keith stepped in between Rose and Stahlman, looking embarrassed. "I'll just take you to see the pipes, Doctor."

"Petra, go with them and make sure the saboteur touches nothing" the Professor barked.

"Woof!"

Most of the room stopped what they were doing and stared at Rose, who smiled flippantly. "Just sparing Miss Williams the expected response to Uncle Joe."

"It's Missus Williams" the strict blonde corrected, and Rose shook her head.

"Nuh-uh. Not the slightest impressions or abrasions from wherever you could wear a ring outside of work. You aren't married."

The young woman followed Sir Keith towards the drill, with a mortified Petra Williams in tow, and leaving behind a visibly hurt Greg Sutton.

Rose's first impression upon looking at the drill's ground level installations was that the equipment was rudimentary and backwards, before she reminded herself the year was 1969. _I'm from the future, I shouldn't judge them on their technological advancement_ the young woman chided herself.

The conduit for the drill bit itself was surrounded by several thick metallic pipes Sir Keith described as channelling the coolant down to be distributed where needed. "Harry Slocum's last intervention was made on coolant pipe two" the man with glasses said, stopping and gesturing at one of the pipes. Like the drill shaft and the rest of the pipes, the bottom of it was affixed on a cylindrical steel platform half-a-metre high. Faded green traces on the metal near the type marked where there must have been a leakage.

Rose crouched and scanned the traces with her sonic screwdriver, and she frowned. "Are your coolant fluid reserves checked for organic contamination?"

"Of course" Sir Keith replied, looking affronted. "We're currently drilling at a depth of twenty miles, any accumulation of impurities in the fluid would quickly create blockages and result in dangerous overheating at the bottom levels, where we can't physically intervene."

"And the traces on the metal are supposed to be dried-up coolant?"

"No, the fluid is a vivid blue" Petra supplied from behind Rose.

The young woman grimaced. "Any other fluids you're using around here that could result in that kind of discoloration? And don't say 'water', no oxidation processes at play here."

"I can't think of anything that would be used for maintenance or clean-up" Sir Keith said with a frown. "I suppose I can have that verified."

"Would be helpful if you did that" Rose said distractedly, now scanning the coolant pipe with her sonic. She lingered for an instant close to its base, where the pipe coming down from the ceiling was bolted to the metal base. Then she pocketed the sonic and stood up. "Okay, you've got a problem."

Sir Keith sighed. "Another one. What kind?"

"Told you, organic contamination" Rose answered. "There's life signs in that pipe, and this", and she pointed at the green traces, "isn't a stain or corrosion, it's the visible evidence of fossilization of some type of living organism."

"That's impossible" Petra Williams said, clearly shocked. "There was nothing visible near the pipe yesterday morning. Fossilization processes don't take twenty-four hours."

"Impossible is my word for Tuesday" Rose groused, and she began to circle around the metallic base and scan the other coolant pipes. "Nothing on this one…"

"You are absolutely sure there's organic contamination going on" Sir Keith said, his voice strained with effort to stay calm.

"Living contamination, as in lifeforms inside one of your coolant pipes" Rose replied. "And I want to analyse whatever's left those fossils behind ASAP, and possibly the live things, but for that I'll have to ask the Brigadier to send for the TARDIS."

Sir Keith coughed. "I'm sorry, did you just say TARDIS?"

"Yeah, I know, that's not a word" Rose groused.

"I don't know if it's a word, Doctor, but that's the name of one of the machines brought here by the Doctor" Petra Williams said.

Rose stood abruptly up again, and stared at the blonde woman. "The TARDIS is here" she said flatly.

"A machine named TARDIS is" the woman replied hesitantly. "I don't know which one. It would be hidden in the shed that's been attributed to the Doctor, but you won't be able to see it. Nobody knows how to get past whatever lock the man has installed on his door."

The time traveller twirled her sonic and grinned. "I'm great with doors. Show me the shed."

* * *

Rose knew which of the rundown storehouses had been allotted to the Doctor well before she and Petra Williams rounded the last corner. She could feel the TARDIS' presence in her head, although she was a presence far younger than the one Rose was used to. The sensation didn't make Rose smile: this TARDIS felt like she was sick and hurting.

"What the hell has he done to you?" Rose murmured as she and Stahlman's assistant arrived at the door.

"Is something wrong, Doctor?"

"Might be. Step aside, just in case."

Rose sonicked the door open, and she understood immediately why the TARDIS was hurting.

"He took the entire console out" she growled. "Controls, dematerialization circuits, time rotor – tell me he didn't!" The young woman strode inside, avoiding the various tools and components stacked haphazardly to move to the left side of the console. She crouched, examining one of the machines jutting from the TARDIS console's support, and let out an exasperated sigh. "Atmospheric and gravity shell extenders, really, Doctor."

"You know what that thing is used for?" Petra Williams said, stepping inside with a clear look of astonishment.

"She's called the TARDIS" Rose replied as she got back up. "Well, really, this is only part of the TARDIS. Imagine if an idiot decided that to put together a functioning human for testing purposes you only need a leg, a lung, a brain and a few accessory systems to tie them together. Of all the idiotic things to do!" Then it was Rose's expression that turned to astonishment. "Seriously, old girl? You're defending him?"

"Who are you talking to?" Petra asked weakly.

"The TARDIS, obviously" Rose replied flippantly. "And the Doctor not knowing what he is doing is nothing new, old girl, it's his oldest excuse where you're concerned." Her expression went to surprise. "What do you mean, he really doesn't know?"

"Are you sure you're alright?" Petra ventured.

Rose made a shushing gesture at the woman's attention. Then she clenched her fists. "They did _what_?"

"Seriously, you're freaking me out" the blonde woman said.

Rose ignored that. She went straight for the blue Police public call box stored in the corner of the shed, fishing a key out of one of her pockets.

"What's such a thing doing here?" Petra now asked, clearly upset.

"Aha!" The key clicked inside the lock. "Come along, Miss Williams" Rose said. "It will be a lot easier to show than to explain."

The woman hesitantly walked to the blue box, her unease showing every step of the way. Then, when Rose made an inviting gesture, she peeked inside – and gaped like a fish. "What is this thing?"

"Told you, she's the TARDIS" Rose said with a grin, idly tapping on the wood. The other woman went inside the box, then stepped back out and away, looking at the outer shell of the time ship and continuing to gape.

"But this is impossible!"

"What's impossible?"

"It's bigger on the inside!"

Rose pumped a fist in the air. "Yes!"

"What?"

The young woman grinned. "You said the thing. She loves it when people say the thing. Don't you love it when people say the thing, old girl?" Rose waltzed into the TARDIS, taking in the sight of one of the time machine's oldest console rooms. "Oh, look at you" she cooed. "You look so serious and classy when you're young, all white and with lots of round things on the walls. Love the round things." Then the young woman frowned. "Also weird to see part of you outside, no wonder why you're feeling so sick and hurt right now."

The quiet humming from the TARDIS changed in pitch enough that its other visitor noticed, and once again, Petra Williams made a double take. "The ship is talking back to you!"

Rose grinned. "She's telepathic, I'm telepathic – three excellent reasons we can communicate."

"You've only given me two reasons."

"Think about it." Rose returned her attention to the TARDIS. "So he's trying to find a way to fix you." She smiled wistfully. "That's funny, so am I. Only somebody who shall remain unmentioned threw away your manual, and the only person capable of fixing you I know where and when to find is a murderous psychopath who wants to conquer the whole of the known universe."

Rose's companion made a choking sound. "I beg your pardon?"

"Don't you worry, Miss, Missy can't do anything of any perceivable consequence for the coming thirty-nine years. It's what she did in the past I need to fix, and-" Rose stopped midway through her sentence and palmed her face. "Tell me you aren't serious, old girl."

Another variation in the humming.

"Rrright, I should have figured. People who never follow rules would hardly care for a guidebook full of instructions. Miss Williams?"

"Yes, Doctor?" the woman forced herself to answer.

"Please stay here and don't wander off."

"What will you be doing?"

Rose gave her a tongue-in-teeth grin. "Wandering off."

* * *

Petra Williams didn't stay. When Rose emerged out of the TARDIS five hours later, with the manual she'd spent that time searching for copied into the memory of her sonic screwdriver, Ian Chesterton and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart were waiting for her.

"Nice of you to join us, Doctor" the Brigadier said pleasantly, fiddling with a horsewhip behind his back. Ian, on the other hand, looked quite worried.

Rose sighed. "Let me guess. I missed something important."

"One of my men has been murdered, and we're nowhere closer to finding Slocum" the Brigadier said. "How goes your part of the investigation?"

The young woman raised her eyebrows. "Oh. Fine, really. Just made some tremendous progress, as a matter of fact."

Ian sighed. "You know, Doctor, you probably resemble the Doctor a lot more than you realize."

"No, seriously, I've made progress with the investigation!" Rose protested.

"Which Miss Williams apprised the Brigadier of four hours ago" Ian pointed out, and the young woman winced.

"Didn't work?"

"I'm afraid it didn't, Doctor" the Brigadier said with a humourless smile.

"Sorry?" Rose made sheepishly. "I was looking for something else I needed, but I was also keeping an eye out for equipment to collect and analyse that strange organic lifeform that exists in coolant pipe two."

"And how much progress did you actually make in that area?"

"I've got the collecting equipment, but there's a little problem with the TARDIS" Rose replied with a frown. "You see, the old girl is dimensionally transcendent, and I don't just mean in terms of bigger-on-the-inside, but also as-"

Rose was cut off by a dial exploding in a shower of sparks, on a panel right next to the entrance of the Doctor's shed. Ian recoiled out of the way of the flying shards of glass. He'd barely got the words "What's going on?" out that Rose was already whisking past him, sonic screwdriver aimed at the panel.

"Bit more power than this relay can handle, cutting it off!" Rose shouted amidst a shower of sparks. Her trick worked as intended, if a full shutdown of everything electric in the shed could be called working as intended. "Huh." The young woman looked curiously at the sonic, index finger drumming lightly on it. "Lot easier to configure you the way I need like I am now" she noted.

"Are you talking to a magic wand?" the Brigadier asked with a small smile.

"Sonic screwdriver" Rose replied. "Ask about it later, we've got a tiny problem."

"What do you call a tiny problem?" Ian asked gingerly.

"Nothing serious" Rose replied offhandedly, "just that the nuclear reactor powering this site is going to have to find something else to do with eighty or so megawatts of juice no longer funneled here. There are normally controllers who handle that kind of incident."

The young woman made to exit the shed, but found the Brigadier in her way. "Where exactly were you heading now, Doctor?"

"Like I said, there are _normally_ controllers who handle that kind of accident" Rose said patiently, waiting for her interlocutor to make the connection.

Ian was faster. "Someone's interfering with the nuclear reactor's controls" he deduced. "We need to move!"

"I'll lead the way" the Brigadier said briskly, drawing his gun. His unflagging composure didn't stop him from breaking into a run, Ian and Rose in tow. A siren began to blare in the compound as the trio made their way – and soon, a quintet, as the Brigadier motioned at a pair of soldiers and snapped a "Benton, Wyatt, with me!"

* * *

There was no technician in sight inside the reactor's control room. There was one UNIT soldier, and an unconscious one at that, smoke rising in curls from his uniform as the man quietly moaned.

"Don't touch him!" Rose shouted in warning.

"We can't just leave him there!" Wyatt protested, trying to make for his comrade. Ian stopped him with Ian's firm grip, while the Brigadier spoke up.

"Do as the Doctor says, Wyatt."

"Shh!" Rose made, putting a finger in front of her lips, before she whispered an urgent "Listen."

And listen the others did, spotting what had caught the young woman's attention: deep, heavy, hoarse breathing, which turned out to come from a humanoid figure who made its way into the control room from another of its exits. The figure's skin was green, and its hair had grown grotesquely, forming a heavy coif and beard. The hands were equally hairy and ended in short talons. It was dressed in a technician's uniform, with a name that went instantly recognized.

"Slocum" Ian said aloud, and he stepped forward, hands open in a peaceful gesture. "You're Harry Slocum. There's nothing to be frightened of, my good man." Ian smiled. Apparently, Slocum wasn't interested in being peaceful. He let out a hoarse rumble and charged at the Science teacher, who barely stepped out of the way. "Hold on, hold on, hold on!"

"He's disagreeing on the nothing to be frightened of bit" Rose shouted, and Slocum turned his attention to her. The Brigadier stood in between, gun at the ready, while his two men circled around the room.

"Not another step, Mister Slocum."

The deformed technician ignored the order, and the Brigadier fired, with very little apparent effect other than staggering Slocum a bit.

"He's so hot the bullets start melting upon impact!" Rose shouted.

Meanwhile, Wyatt had made it to behind Slocum, and the soldier charged in, trying to knock the technician out with his rifle. His opponent realized what was going on and spun around, grabbing hold of the rifle, which Wyatt let go of instantly with a shout of pain. This created just enough separation for Slocum to give the soldier a brutal shove, sending the poor Wyatt flying until he crashed into a side wall and slumped there, and Slocum advanced on him with a feral growl.

That was when Benton opened fire. His machinegun turned out to be somewhat more effective than the Brigadier's sidearm, although the effects weren't instant. Slocum managed to stay upright and turn around in spite of the heavy fire, and it took Benton a second charger to finally send the deformed technician reeling and finally crashing on the floor, where he twitched for an instant before finally stopping to move.

Rose was already in motion, rushing for one of the telephones, which she sonicked before using. She waited for a few seconds and spoke in a crisp voice.

"This is reactor control, Doctor Wolf here. Your technicians are gone, I need to know what levels to retrograde energy production to." A pause, then Rose frowned. "Alright, thank you for the surprise, Miss Williams" she said petulantly.

The young woman hung up, a scowl on her face. "Of all the idiotic things to be doing…"

"Something we should be concerned about?" the Brigadier asked mildly.

"Nothing world-ending yet" Rose replied sarcastically as she worked the controls. "It's just that Uncle Joe has decided the emergency proved his drill could withstand increased speeds, so he's pushing up to where he's got zero safety margins left."

"How about not giving him the energy he needs to do that, then?" Ian suggested, and Rose shook her head.

"He'll throw a world-class tantrum if I do that now, and I want to inspect the coolant systems again." She began to walk off. "Get poor Slocum confined in the most hermetic place you can find – an ordinary prison cell won't do. And nobody touch him."

Rose walked out.

"I could have used a few moments to discuss what happened to Mister Slocum" the Brigadier said with irritation, and Ian smiled at him.

"You're used to working with the Doctor, aren't you, Brigadier?"

"I have for nearly a year."

Then the Brigadier drew his sidearm again and pointing it at a stirring Slocum. "That's not supposed to be possible" he said, shaken.

"Oh yes, this is exactly like adventuring with the Doctor" Ian said with annoyance. "Brigadier, we've got two of those creatures to lead out of here if we don't want a repeat of what just happened. Are you up for it?"

"Two?"

"Look at your man Wyatt."

The UNIT soldier was stirring too, from where he had fallen. His skin had turned green, his face had begun to sprout additional facial hair, and he was looking at his commander with feral eyes.

The Brigadier fought to regain a hold on his nerves. "Run them around" he said more calmly. "Got it. If we can get them to follow only one of us, the others go straight to the Doctor."

The trio of men ran out, Benton closing their formation, followed by the pair of creatures. They were outside when Ian shouted at the Brigadier.

"You know, I've just realized something!"

"What?" the Brigadier shouted back.

"I've actually missed this!"

Ian grinned and kept running, followed by a bewildered Benton and an irked Brigadier.

* * *

Rose had headed straight back for the control centre, finding there a number of agitated technicians, a tired-out Sutton, a shaken Petra, an irate Stahlman and a relieved-looking Sir Keith.

"Doctor, there's something we needed to show you" he said, gesturing at a closed metal box on a trolley, and then nodding at a technician equipped with heat resistant gloves, who opened the box. Rose approached, leaned a bit to see what was inside the box, and gritted her teeth.

"Nice shade of green" she said, fingers coming to drum on the trolley as she inspected the substance in a transparent jar inside the box. She looked up at Sir Keith, fingers still drumming. "Spillage from coolant pipe two?"

"That's the most recent spillage." He looked a bit embarrassed. "I'm afraid we haven't been entirely forthcoming with you – this substance has been leaking for a little while now, but in very small quantities prior to the recent incidents. It defies analysis."

"What Sir Keith means is his teams haven't been trying hard enough" Professor Stahlman said harshly. "If it exists, it can be analysed."

"Our labs say they can't get close enough to the stuff to carry out a proper examination. It already took a lot out of them just to siphon the most recent spillage into that heat resistant jar."

"Then we shall just have to wait until it cools down a bit, won't we?" Stahlman said derisively.

Rose snorted. "And this is where Sir Keith reminds you the rest of the stuff hasn't cooled down at all in spite of many days having passed."

"How did you know?" asked a dumbfounded Keith.

"There's a reason the Brigadier secured my services" Rose said, a frown on concentration on her face as she removed the lid from the heat resistant jar, "I actually stand a chance to find out what's going on when things go beyond current scientific knowledge. Speaking of the Brigadier", and the young woman activated her sonic screwdriver, "he's going to want a word with the person in charge of this project."

"I have no time to waste over any matters not related to improving the efficiency of the drilling operations" Stahlman snapped.

"There's been two and likely three violent deaths on this compound, and you've got two mutants that can't be stopped with SMGs running loose and looking for more victims" Rose retorted. She withdrew from the jar and pocketed her sonic. "And this substance is what would have caused the mutation."

The young woman looked at Professor Stahlman, her golden eyes hard. "Game over, Professor. You're drilling into a pocket of highly virulent parasites that can be spread from contaminated organisms to their victims and renders them virtually immune to firearms. You're gonna have to cease all operations and evacuate this site, while UNIT contain the threat and try to find out how to stop the contamination from spreading."

Stahlman glared at her. "You have no authority here" he said angrily. "This project is nearing completion, and we aren't stopping until we've completed the drilling, no matter the distractions, and certainly not over the concerns of teenage girls with bad colour jobs!"

"Yeah, you're Uncle Joe alright" Rose replied darkly, fingers drumming their four beats on the trolley. "Your colleague Sir Keith, however, seems concerned enough that he's going to warn the proper authorities of the problem, just like I'm going to advise UNIT to shut this operation down. And somehow" she added meaningfully, "I have a feeling inopportune communication breakdowns and unfortunate accidents could happen to people in the way of increasing the efficiency of your drilling."

"This is slanderous! I will not stand for such outrage!" Stahlman looked wildly at his technicians. "You are a liar and a saboteur, and you will remove yourself from my sight!"

"You've got a saboteur alright, but that's not me" Rose countered. "Someone screwed with the computer monitoring the alerts, and it's stopped running."

"It doesn't matter!" Stalhman said harshly. "I know exactly how much faster we can safely accelerate the drilling. Now kick that Doctor out and have that annoying stuff deep frozen before anybody else comes and wastes our time with irrelevant concerns."

Rose left the control room, followed by a sweating Sir Keith, who stopped her right before she exited the building. "Doctor, can I have a word?"

"Sure."

The man swallowed. "Are you absolutely certain about the biological contamination?"

Rose gave him a long look. "You want this whole drilling business to be stopped before it gets out of hand, don't you?"

"Her Majesty's government badly want the new source of energy, but there will be a limit to how many risks they are willing to take to secure it" the administrator replied. "Do you think we have two days?"

The young woman frowned. "That depends on how much Stahlman manages to cut on the drilling time, but I think I can do something to prolong that, with a little help from the Doctor."

"You know the Doctor" Keith realized, and Rose nodded.

"I know the Doctor. More importantly, I've looked at what he was doing here before he got called away, and he was filching a considerable amount of energy from the reactor for his own experiments."

"Yes, Professor Stahlman was more than a little annoyed with that arrangement, but of course the power derivation to the Doctor's shed has now been switched off, to cover for the increased energy needs of the accelerated drilling."

"Doesn't matter, I can get the switch to activate remotely" Rose said. She frowned, fingers drumming on her thigh. "You need the time to get to London and get the authorities to order stopping the drill, right?"

"Yes" Keith replied with evident relief. "Can you make sure I have the time?"

"I'll see to that now." Rose frowned again. "I really should talk to the Brigadier. Can you check with him or have someone tell him to see me at the Doctor's shed? Oh, and Ian too. If you don't mind the extra passenger, I'd very much appreciate it if he could nip over to my TARDIS and arrange to have it brought here. It's in Peckham, Ian and his wife Barbara know approximately where to find it and know what to look for."

"And what is this TARDIS thing they would be looking for? Another console with strange instruments? Is that a computer?"

Rose grinned. "It's a Police Public Call Box."

The young woman swept off, leaving a dumbfounded Sir Keith behind her.

* * *

Before he'd met the Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had already been seasoned as a soldier in UNIT, and while he was far from knowing enough to anticipate and analyse every type of threat one could encounter in a line of work dealing with the extraordinary and the extra-terrestrial, he'd rarely felt like he was in over his head.

Working with the Doctor had proved a surprisingly upsetting experience in that regard. The Time Lord certainly was highly intelligent and knowledgeable beyond any other person the Brigadier knew of, but these qualities made him hard to work with even when he was being cooperative, as he always seemed to be three or five steps ahead of the Brigadier and not waiting for him to catch up – and that was without counting the times the Doctor started to get rude or impatient, or when he became outright deceptive. Repairing his TARDIS and flying off into the sunset stayed the Time Lord's first priority, and his determination to achieve that goal had already resulted in a number of awkward situations for the Brigadier.

Doctor Wolf, unlike the Brigadier had first thought, took some of the issues of working with the Doctor to the next level. She was clearly quite brilliant and knowledgeable herself, more willing to explain than UNIT's regular consultant, and in some respects seemed better equipped than the Time Lord to handle urgent situations and obtain some immediate results, but in turn that quick adaptability made trying to keep up with the alien woman as easy as running after a whirlwind, and she made the Doctor's way of "delegating" problems seem the height of teamwork in comparison – Doctor Wolf's _modus operandi_ seemed to be trusting the people she was working with to clean up while she kept running and raised even more chaos for her associates to deal with.

The Brigadier's current problem was that he already _couldn't_ deal with the pair of mutants that had chased him, Sergeant Benton and Ian Chesterton just long enough to sneak away and disappear in a compound they knew a lot better than the three humans who'd been playing bait. All this to meet with an agitated Sir Keith, who didn't have the slightest idea of the danger he was in and had come to ask Chesterton to go back to London with him, and to tell the Brigadier that the manic Doctor was about to cause even _more_ problems.

And speaking of problems, Sergeant Benton was nice enough to remind the Brigadier he had another one. "We _could_ try and talk to Professor Stahlman first" the Sergeant suggested. "If he realizes just how dangerous this place has become, he'll do the sensible thing."

"He's obsessed as a mule and looking for any reason to keep pushing harder" the Brigadier snapped, "and he'll be even less likely to take our concerns under consideration if we don't get to Doctor Wolf in time to stop her newest stunt."

The pair of soldiers reached the Doctor's shed, and the Brigadier proceeded to hammer on the door. "Open up, Doctor!"

"In a minute!" Rose's voice called from inside. The Brigadier heard a shrill noise he recognized as coming from the woman's sonic device.

"I need to talk to you now!"

"Alright, keep your beret on…"

The door of the shed opened to expose Doctor Wolf busily checking switches and dials on what the Brigadier knew was the TARDIS' console. Its centrepiece was rising and falling slowly as a few alert lights flashed, and the machine emitted a constant humming.

"Doctor, what exactly are you doing here?"

The young woman looked up briefly from the console and grinned. "Hello Brigadier! I'm taking advantage of one of the Doctor's ongoing experiments and powering up the TARDIS' console so she can run it – just gave her a little bit more oomph than was strictly necessary."

"You're going to make the Professor go insane on us" the Brigadier replied exasperatedly, "and I _need_ to convince him to cease his operations now that we have three people dead on these grounds. Antagonizing him by taking energy away from his drilling operation is going to be anything but helpful!"

"That's why Sir Keith is on his way to London" Rose replied with a mischievous grin.

"Doctor…"

"Oh, come on." The young woman stopped her efforts and she looked at the Brigadier from across the TARDIS' console, fingers drumming on the metal. "You can't order Uncle Joe around and you know it. You'd have to get to London yourself to ask for this place to be put under martial law and it'd take a lot more than a couple of days to get those powers, and we only have two days."

"We also have-"

"Tell me in a minute when I reappear!" Rose interrupted him as she started to fade away along with the console.

And then there was a flash of light, followed by all power went out in the shed, and both TARDIS contraption and white-haired woman simply vanished.

"Oh, just great" the Brigadier groaned. The phone hanging by the door rang. "Sergeant, pick that up, would you?"

"Yes, Sir." The soldier took the call. "Sergeant Benton… Oh, hello, Professor… … Yes, we noticed the power went out, but Doctor Wolf was in the middle of an experiment and-"

The sergeant groaned. "He hung up."

"He would have" a visibly annoyed Brigadier replied.

"The Doctor said she'd reappear a minute" Benton pointed out, and the Brigadier nodded.

Both men waited, not one, but five minutes in the darkened shed. But the young woman didn't reappear. She and the TARDIS console were gone, and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had no idea where or when they would be reappearing…

* * *

… or that she would be reappearing in the middle of the Doctor's shed and neither of them would be around. Nor was the Doctor's equipment, for that matter; Rose and the TARDIS console had reappeared in a shed with the exact same walls, but used for storage as well as parking for a vintage yellow car. And Rose certainly didn't remember a propaganda poster with a distinguished moustachioed man's face above the words UNITY IN STRENGTH.

"Hang on" Rose mused, absent-mindedly drumming her fingers on the wall. "I've seen this face somewhere – oh!"

Rose ran to the door, which she sonicked open, slid just enough to look around and see a mostly familiar compound, with one off-note: a patrol of four men in black shirts and berets, carrying SMGs, walking away in locked step. Instinctively, Rose looked up, but there was nothing of notice in the skies she could see.

She closed the door, feeling distinctly queasy and uncomfortable – and she realized the sensation was coming from the TARDIS console, which somehow couldn't connect with…

"No way, I _know_ the walls are closed. This is impossible!"

She looked back at the poster, hyperventilating. "You're Oswald Mosley – well, you're a younger version of you if this is still 1969 and I haven't also time travelled. And if you're the boss of this place in England when I know you aren't and somehow you've got militias patrolling the place, there's only one meaning."

Rose stared in shock at the TARDIS console.

"Old girl, we're in a parallel universe!"

* * *

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N:** Wanted to revisit a bit of Classic Who, here we are ^^ First story ever in the series to feature a parallel universe, as a matter of fact. Old Who stories, however, are really too long to fit into one chapter, so this one is getting split.

 **qeadwrsf** , I suppose technically this would be season 7 Doctor Who? :D Thanks for the review!

 **ELinkA** , thanks for the kind words ^^

 **Lena 'Slipstream' Oxton** , no Coal Hill, I'm afraid, but I want to play a bit with classic companions before "formally entering season 4".


	3. II - Inferno (Pt 2)

**A/N:** I doubt any of you reading own Doctor Who anymore than I do ^^ I wish you all a very happy 2018 all the same.

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf  
I. Inferno – Part Two**

* * *

Rose and the TARDIS console had reappeared in a shed with the exact same walls, but used for storage as well as parking for a vintage yellow car. And Rose certainly didn't remember a propaganda poster with a distinguished moustachioed man's face above the words UNITY IN STRENGTH.

"Hang on" Rose mused, absent-mindedly drumming her fingers on the wall. "I've seen this face somewhere – oh!"

Rose ran to the door, which she sonicked open, slid just enough to look around and see a mostly familiar compound, with one off-note: a patrol of four men in black shirts and berets, carrying SMGs, walking away in locked step. Instinctively, Rose looked up, but there was nothing of notice in the skies she could see.

She closed the door, feeling distinctly queasy and uncomfortable – and she realized the sensation was coming from the TARDIS console, which somehow couldn't connect with…

"No way, I know the walls are closed. This is impossible!"

She looked back at the poster, hyperventilating. "You're Oswald Mosley – well, you're a younger version of you if this is still 1969 and I haven't also time travelled. And if you're the boss of this place in England when I know you aren't and somehow you've got militias patrolling the place, there's only one meaning."

Rose stared in shock at the TARDIS console.

"Old girl, we're in a parallel universe!"

The young woman couldn't help but start dancing a happy little jig around the console. "We can get to parallel universes, we can get to parallel universes" she sing-sang merrily, and then she whooped. "I'm going back to the Doctor!"

The dull resonance in her head where the connection to the TARDIS normally felt vibrant, even in such a state, brought her back to reality. "Oh, right, got to find a way to power you back up first" she started to babble, "and that's not going to be an easy one, oh no, old girl. Still, if I remember my history, the trick was giving you regeneration energy. Got bits of Time Lord stuck all over the place, bits of Time Lords, even, so maybe I have just a little bit of that to offer to you, and why am I so hungry?" She repeated those last words pensively: "Why am I so hungry? That doesn't feel like normal hungry, more like angry hungry, why should I be angry hungry?"

"A better question to ask is why you are here" a cold woman's voice made from behind Rose, who whipped around to face the shed's entrance and saw four men in black uniforms training their rifles at her, while their leader, a woman in her thirties with shoulder-length black hair, a brown officer's uniform and a strangely familiar face was holding the time traveller at the point of her own pistol.

"Excellent timing" Rose said with a grin. "Was wondering if you could point me to the dinner lady, she and I got an appointment, but before I go, did you guys happen to fly here by zeppelin?"

"You will not ask any questions and you will speak only when spoken to" the woman replied coldly.

"Leader, look at her eyes" one of the armed men said, and Rose recognized the face of Sergeant Benton – a harder Benton, who looked ready to shoot her.

"I see them, Subleader" the woman snapped back, and she returned her attention to the time traveller. "Unlike your green friends, you seem capable of conversation, so in the interest of not getting riddled full of bullets like they were, you will surrender and come quietly."

"Oh, those things are also here" Rose said casually. She grinned. "Perfect. Take me to your leader!"

"You will find during your interrogation this situation is no laughing matter" the Subleader chided Rose, earning herself a tongue-in-teeth grin.

"It's just something the Doctor loves to say, figured I would too, since I'm filling in for him. And did you mention an interrogation? Can you guys work fast enough? We're on a bit of a schedule, here."

The alternate Benton walked to her and shoved her with his weapon. "Shut up, and move!"

"Alright, alright. I didn't have anything planned for next year anyway."

Rose made a show of acting nonchalant as she was led in the direction of what she remembered being the Brigadier's office in her own dimension, but she was surprised at how easily she could play that game and focus on observing the layout attentively. And it turned out there were more similarities than there were differences in a compound that was nearly identical to the one she remembered, once allowances were made for the militaristic nature of this dimension's version of the UK.

The distraction was a welcome one from the drums, which apparently could follow Rose to a parallel world, but more importantly, it was keeping Rose's mind off the ravenous hunger she was feeling. A hunger that could have a mundane explanation – she _had_ been running and moving about without sustenance for the forty-eight hours since she'd been freed from the Master – except that the young woman's digestive tract had gone entirely without use for the entire year of her imprisonment, while she was being fed through alternate methods, and had atrophied to the point it was quite incapable of raising such a powerful need to feed off something… Feed off what, exactly?

The young woman shook her head energetically. _Alright, Rose, focus_ she admonished herself, _you're about to be interrogated, so start by remembering the first rule: you're the only irreplaceable person in the interrogation process as long as they think you've got something they want. Work with that._

The nominal boss was another familiar figure, in a different but similarly cut brown uniform, and sporting an eyepatch caught in-between a long and deep scar on his face's left side. Rose was shoved unceremoniously in his direction. She still pulled off a grin.

"Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, long time no see!"

Like his counterpart in Rose's reality, the man proved to have quite a bit of composure. "It's Brigade Leader" he said levelly. "And you've certainly done your research on this installation – I hear you got quite far in."

"I came a rather long way" Rose replied pleasantly. "How is Stahlman's drilling going? Did it bring up even more green superheated sludge? More mutants?"

This did have the effect of shaking the Brigade Leader off. He looked questioningly at the woman who'd been in charge back at the shed.

"You can probably see she's a mutant herself" the woman pointed out. "She didn't deny it. We found her babbling in some obscure dialect in front of complex instrumentation that was somehow sneaked inside the compound."

"Oh, right, you've met with part of the TARDIS" Rose interjected brightly. "Wonderful old girl. Rather mischievous, but not a bad circuit in her entire body."

"And you are employing one of the oldest tricks in the book" the Brigade Leader said, having found his composure again. "Who are you?"

Rose grinned. "Oh, that's easy. I'm Rose Tyler, and as your nice lady sidekick pointed out, I'm not entirely human."

"Who are you working for?"

The grin turned mischievous. "You from a parallel universe."

The door to the office bursting open stopped the Brigade Leader from having to reply. An irate-looking, white-gloved and bald Professor Stahlman made his way through, earning himself a no-less irate remark.

"Joseph, I'm rather busy at the moment."

Rose burst into hysterical laughter, and the Professor glared at her.

"Who is this woman? Another saboteur?"

"I was just about to interrogate her" the Brigadier replied angrily, eye trained on the laughing woman who barely managed to stand up. "What's so amusing?" he barked.

"His- his- his name is _Joseph_!" Rose choked through even more laughter.

"Not a saboteur, but a waste of time" Stahlman said sharply, before rounding off on the Brigadier. "I still have a major security breach, and we are just over three hours away from contact. What the hell have you been doing here?"

Parallel Lethbridge Stewart seemed as unflappable as his counterpart in Rose's world. He calmly raised a hand. "We'll have that discussion after the prisoner has been removed. Leader Shaw?"

"Brigade Leader?"

"Take her to the cells. Do not damage her yet."

The uniformed woman made for the cuffed Rose and began to pull her away, but Rose's flippant words stopped her. "We'll talk in a bit. I'm the only one who knows what's going on here."

"And what is going on?" the Brigade Leader asked back with a faint smile.

"Why, parasitic contamination in preparation for a nonhuman invasion, obviously" Rose replied matter-of-factly, before permitting herself a little smirk. "Green, hairy, white-hot, never dying mutants not enough of a clue?"

Leader Shaw pulled again, and as Rose was forced to spin around, for an instant, her memory of another woman she'd seen recently, her traits almost identical to those on the face she found herself close to.

 _Liz_ the young woman realized. _Companion of a younger Doctor in my reality, whom I've just seen in America two days ago._

She let herself led away to a cell block in the next building over, and locked inside bars for good measure – it didn't really matter when she had a sonic screwdriver. And not when she'd made an impression on her jailor.

"You were trying to throw us off" the woman said accusingly. "You don't actually know what's going on, so you speak more nonsense on top of your nonsense."

"And you're Elizabeth Shaw" Rose ventured, a little less sure of herself than she made it sound. But judging by her jump in reaction, the woman didn't have a different first name in this parallel universe.

The woman recovered. "You're really well informed for someone who makes absolutely no sense" she gritted.

"I just happen to have met your counterpart in a parallel universe" Rose replied calmly, her fingers idly drumming on the jail bars.

"And now you're back to making nonsense."

"You're just having a very natural response." Rose grinned. "Also, is it possible to have anything to eat? I'm starving so badly I could eat those steel bars."

Elizabeth looked at her with disbelief. "You are a mutant that can eat metal?"

Rose's tone was conversational as she replied, and Elizabeth Shaw looked at her with increasing shock as the white-haired woman spoke. "No idea, to tell the truth, although I could definitely dissolve the bars' atomic structure and rearrange it into organic matter if I really set my mind to it, so I suppose I could eat what would be left of them – guess that counts? Just not sure how well my stomach could take it, haven't eaten anything solid in over a year, that process could turn out iffy."

" _What?_ "

"Though I have no idea about liquids" Rose pondered. "Mmmh, what do you think, Liz, tea with milk and lots of sugar, or do you think the caffeine would be too much for an atrophied digestive tract?"

Elizabeth just shook her head disbelievingly. "You're insane."

"Yep, that's me" Rose replied with a tongue-in-teeth grin. "Mad girl in a blue box, except I left my box at home. I need to get back home. Do you suppose you could take me back to the shed where I arrived?"

"How did you even get there with your machinery in the first place?" the other woman asked shakily.

"Transdimensional travel – it's like teleportation, just sideways. Also takes a lot out of the old girl – the TARDIS, stands for 'Time And Relative Dimensions In Space', you've met bits and pieces of her. The Doctor's made such a mess…" Rose blinked. "Oh, but I'm holding you up. When you report to the Brigade Leader, could you see to it that he send me some tea? I mean, I'm going to have to save the world for him, that's a fair exchange."

"You are _completely_ insane." Leader Shaw breathed deeply. "I'll tell the Brigade Leader you clearly aren't a spy, someone so utterly out of their mind couldn't manage."

Rose grinned. "Oh, you never know. There's a Time Lord of my acquaintance, he was nutty as a nut tree, and she managed to stay hidden on Earth for nearly half a century until he became Prime Minister."

"Can't even keep track of genders in a single sentence… I guess we're going to keep you, but for your own protection."

"See? You're a nice person after all" Rose said mirthfully. "You'd have to be, to travel with the Doctor, and parallel versions of the same person tend to stay fundamentally the same people."

"And I'll be going mad myself if I stick around here for a moment longer" Elizabeth added, retreating from the room. Rose's voice called after her.

"When you've realized you're in really big trouble, you know where to find me!" Then she added _in petto_ : "In the shed, obviously." The young woman drew her sonic screwdriver and used it on the lock. "Sorry Liz, things to do, TARDISes to fix. Good thing I've got a copy of the manual with me. Bad thing I don't have a magic phone to hide around – oh." Rose grinned. "Archangel. I might have to get that thing going again, just tuned to myself rather than to the Master. Shouldn't be too hard when I've got bits of him stuck all over me. And psychic paper. And a hell of a grin. Huh, and very little knowledge of space engineering, so scratch that thought for the next couple of decades or so. First things first, then: TARDIS."

* * *

Nobody tried to intercept or arrest Rose again on her way to the shed. The only hindrance she met came from herself – somehow, she felt attracted to the drill site, and her instincts told her it had a connection with the ravenous hunger she was enduring. But heading there wasn't an option, so the young woman pressed on to the shed, and to the parts of the TARDIS, proceeding to open up the machinery and look for what she knew to be a power cell.

"There we go… Now how do I channel regeneration energy into this thing?" She looked despondently at the TARDIS' column. "Old girl, any ideas?" There was no response forthcoming, and Rose's next words were said grumpily. "Alright, I'll read the freaking manual."

Reading turned out to be a strange new experience as well. Not just because every character on the pages Rose was turning looked magnified as a result of her improved senses, but also because she was finding out she could read much, much faster than she remembered being capable of. A strange sort of calm settled over her as she went through the pages, her concentration dulling away the hunger and the sound of the drums. Engrossed in her read, the young woman barely noticed the child who approached her, coming to seat with her on the red clay.

"What are you reading, Koschei?"

Rose looked up to see a boy of perhaps nine or ten years old in simple but elegant, deep red robes, contrasting just right with the burnt orange skies of-

"Gallifrey?"

Rose started, and found herself back in the shed, seated and resting against the TARDIS' console, the manual still on her lap, but with no trace left of the boy or of the alien and yet strangely familiar landscape. "That's impossible" she breathed, fingers drumming on the manual's cover. "I was just seeing Gallifrey. I've never been to Gallifrey, and I know it's Gallifrey, and I know", and she glared at the manual, "I remember reading all this before, except I've never read it before, the Master has… The Master has…"

Rose's hands flew in front of her mouth. "Oh my God! That was the Master's memories! I have some of the Master's memories!" Then the young woman blinked. "Hold on, I've got bits of the Doctor stuck inside me too… With any luck…"

The young woman let go of her manual and held the TARDIS power cell aloft, concentrating hard on what she could remember the Doctor doing that one time they got lost in Pete's World, and realizing with dismay she hadn't been there at the precise moment he'd done something to charge up the cell.

"That would have been too easy" she whispered, her good mood evaporating instantly. "Can't make myself remember something I have no idea how to remember, the one big thing I need to be able to do." She held the power cell aloft in the palm of her hand, on a level with her face. "But it's a little thing, really, isn't it, old girl? Just have to find a way of giving you a little bit of my life. Imagine how simple it would be if I could just breathe it into you…"

On impulse, Rose closed her eyes, heaved in a deep breath and slowly exhaled it, putting into the motion all her hopes that somehow she could just part with the tiniest bit of regeneration energy she knew had to be stuck into her Time Lord cells. And she was rewarded when she opened her eyes to see a faint but warm glow surround the small object in the palm of her hand. She chortled.

"I just gave away ten years of my life." Then she blinked. "Why did I just say that? Did the Doctor say that?"

There was no reply from her own mind, of course. Just the drums.

There _was_ a reply from someone else.

"What did you just do?"

"Why do people always interrupt me while I'm working on this TARDIS?" Rose said grumpily, turning to face a shocked Leader Shaw.

"You were blowing out… golden stuff!"

"Regeneration energy" Rose corrected with clear annoyance. "You're not trying to arrest me or shoot me, I see. I suppose that's good."

"I'm not sure arresting you again would do any good" Leader Shaw said feebly. "What are you?"

"Not human, I thought we'd covered that already. And hungry. And surprised. You're genuinely curious, and I've already seen enough about your Britain's regime to know curiosity isn't allowed – so what gives?"

Leader Shaw didn't get a chance to answer – a green-skinned mutant in a tattered militia uniform showed up behind her and lunged with a roar. The woman barely managed to dodge, scrambling away from it and inside the shed. She drew her sidearm and unloaded it, to no effect.

"Nice to see some things don't change" Rose groused, before she yelled an irate "Oi, ugly! Over there!" She pointed the charged energy cell at the mutant.

The creature responded just as Rose had hoped, abandoning Leader Shaw and trying to get at the white-haired woman, who retreated behind the TARDIS console.

"You know the game" the young woman said with a grin. "You turn around, I turn around" she said as the mutant tried just that and she responded, keeping the console between them. "You turn around, I turn around… You turn around, I turn around… You turn around, you get a faceful of fire extinguisher!"

"RAAARRRGH!"

Neither Rose nor Leader Shaw expected the creature to collapse as a result, clearly unconscious.

"Right…" Rose wheezed as she looked at the other woman, who was loosely holding onto the fire extinguisher she'd grabbed from the shed's wall. "Suppose I should have seen this coming, burning hot doesn't like getting cooled down…"

The mutant, however, was already stirring.

"Okay, time for my favourite exercise" Rose said to the other woman with a grin.

"And what is that?"

"Run!"

The two women ran, Leader Shaw still holding the extinguisher. "Where are we going?" she shouted.

"Don't ask me, it's your facility!" Rose shouted back, before adding an urgent "Duck!"

The two women flattened on the muddy ground, and there was the distant report of guns in the distance, and then a howl of fury from behind them as the creature was staggered by rifle bullets.

"You've got some good shots in your crew!" Rose shouted out for Leader Shaw, who let out a stressed reply.

"Roll out of the path and to your left, I'll follow!"

"Like a pig in the mud!" Rose shouted back happily, and she executed herself. "Ewwww! Icky!"

There was more howling, and a loud splash when the mutant crashed in the mud. Then three bullets impacted uncomfortably close to Rose, and she groaned. "Oh, right. Escaped prisoner."

* * *

One of the main differences between Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart resided in the latter being a lot less open to the supernatural. Another resided in his far easier dismissal of a subordinate's observations when they didn't fit accepted norms, which was unsurprisingly the case when Leader Shaw was trying to explain about how their prisoner had been blowing golden vapour out of her mouth into an alien device. The Brigade Leader's stubborn refusal to listen quickly got on Rose's nerves. That was how the one-eyed man found himself at the receiving end of a lecture from his bound and shackled prisoner.

"Look, Brigade Leader, I get that you're a good little fascist boss in a nice little fascist world and it's really not good form to listen to a subordinate when they're telling you about something really not ordinary that just happened, but in case you didn't notice, you've got green, hairy and boiling mutants rampaging through your compound, and their existence can be traced all the way back to equally boiling green goop good old Joseph-Eric Djugachvili decided doesn't exist but still cost you… how many murders? Three? Four? Five?"

"Seven" an uncomfortable Leader Shaw supplied.

"Seven murders" Rose forged on, "and that's not counting the number of times you've sprayed the mutants that spawned from some of them full of bullets and they got back up like you'd been tickling them instead of having gone fascist on them. And you still can't accept the notion other non-human forms of life might exist with their own set of powers just because the regulations say they don't?"

"Shut her up" the Brigade Leader snapped at his militiamen.

"Who-hoh, that's great, shut me up!" Rose shot back, her voice full of sarcasm, "but not right now, mates, you might wanna lie down on the ground and cover your heads."

"And why should we listen?" other-Benton asked defiantly.

"Because of the earthquake" Rose replied.

"The what?"

The earth did quake – violently enough to send all four occupants of the Brigade Leader's office to the floor, covering their heads as pieces of plaster from the ceiling fell on them. Leader Shaw had stumbled towards Rose and done her best to shelter the shackled time traveller. The black-haired woman ended up unconscious for her troubles, bleeding nastily from the crown of her head.

"I need to examine Leader Shaw!" Rose shouted the moment the tremors abated.

"What the hell was that?" other-Benton yelled back at her.

"Go and ask Mister Stalin, I'm willing to bet the remaining half of my brain it's his fault" Rose snarled at her interlocutor. "And before you do that, set me loose so I can make sure the bleeding isn't all that serious!"

"Do it" the Brigade Leader cut in, his voice level, as though he wasn't lying under his overturned chair in an office not littered by the contents of its shelves and desk and his face wasn't covered in plaster dust.

Other-Benton executed himself, and Rose scrambled to retrieve her sonic screwdriver and to scan Leader Shaw's cut. "Surface cut, looks uglier than it really is" she said with a sigh of relief as she cauterized it.

"What the hell is that thing?" a baffled other-Benton asked.

"Sonic screwdriver" Rose replied distractedly as she pocketed the device. "Be a dear and carry her, we really should be elsewhere and I don't fancy leaving her behind for the mutants to pick up."

"Who put you in charge?" the Brigade Leader challenged. "You're a prisoner."

"So are you" Rose shot back. "More than me, even, it's _your_ dying planet."

" _My_ dying planet?"

"It will be if you don't kick Uncle Joe's ass and get him to stop his drill in the next twenty minutes." The Brigade Leader looked at the time traveller with suspicion, and she let out an exasperated sigh.

"Oh, for God's sake, why won't you just understand we haven't got the time to fight over who's boss or discuss what's going to happen in committee? That quake we just got through came all the way down from the mantle – your idiot of a professor is about to cause a disaster that'll make the explosion of Krakatoa look like a tinder spark! You want to order someone around and still be useful? Throw martial law down on Stahlman!"

The Brigade Leader studied the irate woman for a moment, his expression inscrutable. Rose was feeling about ready to get in his face and slap him when the man finally spoke up, halting her in her tracks. "Alright, let's do that."

"Good!" Rose huffed. She made for a fire extinguisher that had been thrown off its support – and found herself staring into the barrel of other-Benton's gun. Something snapped inside the young woman. Her eyes flared gold, she let out a feral snarl, and the weapon vanished in a shower of golden motes. The soldier jumped back with a terrified yelp.

"What the hell?"

"Leader Shaw!" Rose yelled back at him. "Pick up! Carry! Now!" She collected the extinguisher and marched out of the office, leaving behind a shaken militiaman, who looked desperately at his ever-composed officer.

"You heard the lady" the Brigade Leader said levelly. "Do as she said. I'll take the other fire extinguisher."

* * *

The two men followed after the angry time traveller, other-Benton carrying other-Liz as ordered, and made their way to the central control of the drill. There, just beyond the entrance of the room, they found a standing and shaking Rose Tyler, who addressed a chill "Do any of you know how to stop that bloody drill of Stahlman's? Because he sure as hell isn't going to listen."

The Brigade Leader made to ask for an explanation, but a quick glance past the time traveller showed him all he needed to know. Stahlman was standing at the reinforced door which led to the maintenance shaft, mainly recognizable by the plaque on his smoking blouse – his skin had turned a familiar green, the man had grown fangs, and he was covered in hirsute hair.

"This seems to be a problem" the Brigade Leader commented matter-of-factly.

"Very small problem considering the country's about to look like we're on Mercury" Rose snarked back. "And I need to access the drill shaft itself."

"Why?"

Rose let out another exasperated sigh. "Just don't ask, I don't even know myself why I feel I need to be there, but I do."

Another pair of mutants in lab coats showed up from the maintenance shaft, flanking Stahlman and effectively barring the passage.

"Is this the reason why you wanted to carry around a fire extinguisher?" the Brigade Leader asked, and Rose replied tensely.

"Leader Shaw sprayed one of these guys with a face-full, stopped it for a while."

"Can't you just- you know…" Other-Benton looked significantly at Rose. "Vanish them?"

The time traveller glared at the militiaman, her eyed gleaming. "I don't kill unless there's really no other way."

"These things don't seem to be killable another way" other-Benton pointed out.

"We don't need to kill them to get around them, just not touch them."

"Not touch them?"

"You heard that right" Rose replied tensely, raising her fire extinguisher at the approaching mutants. "Under no circumstance should you let those things in contact with you. They'll turn you into one of them if you do."

The Brigade Leader 'opened fire', releasing a plume of carbon snow at the closest mutant to him. The creature wailed and stumbled backwards before it crashed, opening just enough of a passage for the one-eyed man to flank the mutant Stahlman and spray him in turn, while Rose took charge of the third creature. Both mutants joined their fellow on the floor, thrashing for an instant before lying quiescent.

"Dead?" other-Benton asked.

"Unconscious" Rose replied, making her way past the felled creatures. "They'll get back up in moments" she added, beckoning the militiaman to follow. "Come on!"

The group made their way to the maintenance shaft. The Brigade Leader made to close the heavy steel gate on them, but Rose shook her head negatively.

"If another quake hits hard enough to cut off the power, we're trapped here."

"If we don't shut that door, we have thirty seconds before we get attacked again" the one-eyed man replied, "and I can't guarantee I'll hold that passage alone. We've got to shut that door."

Rose chewed on her bottom lip, then gave a short nod of assent. "Let's hope I can figure out a way to stop this before the big one" she said with a wince, turning her attention to the maintenance shaft itself. The whole lower structure was covered in seeping green goop the time traveller immediately recognized.

"More of that stuff's coming up." She took out her sonic screwdriver and scanned it. "Colony stays strongly agglutinated, no risk of aerosolization."

"No risk of what?" other-Benton called from the side of the room, where he'd laid down his charge.

"That green jelly is actually billions of microscopic parasitic organisms stuck to one another" Rose supplied. "And below this shaft is…"

The young woman grabbed her head in her hands, her sonic sticking out like a strange antenna. She let out a drawn sigh. "So that's why…" she murmured. "It's not just magma breaking through the mantle, those things are actually using the shock to create a rift in space-time. And I've been drawn to the rift's leaking energy…"

The earth shook again, far more violently than the first time around, sending all three people still standing in the maintenance shaft to the floor. The tremors also caused some of the organic spillage to be flung all across the room. Rose barely managed to avoid getting hit by relying on her time senses to roll away from the splashing goop.

She stood up when the tremors abated, absently noting that the temperature must have risen by a couple dozen degrees amid the quake. Then there was a painfully loud creak of metal as the drill struggled to keep going and it snapped, somewhere not far below ground level.

The Brigade Leader was the first who spoke up. "That was another big one" he remarked, his voice sounding less assured than usual. Rose turned to face him and immediately spotted the trail of green slime on his left cheek, getting absorbed into the one-eyed man's skin as she looked at him.

"I'm so sorry" she let out.

"Don't be" the man returned with a faint smile. "If what you said is true, about this country being about to turn into an ocean of magma, I think my odds of survival will be better as one of the mutants." Another tremor punctuated the Brigade Leader's statement. "What about you?" he went on. "Do you have an idea of how to save yourself?"

"I've got one" Rose admitted, her own voice distraught. "It's a very shaky idea, and I really rather detest the implications of it, but I do think I have a way out… I'd rather find a way to stop what's going on, though."

"We're out of time" the Brigade Leader replied matter-of-factly. "If you can save yourself, that's what you should do. I only have a request for you."

Rose opened her mouth to protest, but another tremor almost sent the party to the floor again. They all stood gingerly, and the Brigade Leader looked straight at the young woman.

"Can you save my subordinates?"

Rose hesitated for an instant, just long enough for other-Benton to speak up. "I'm not going to need saving" the man said, and she turned to see the back of his uniform pelted with the green substance. Violent banging resumed at the door, and the militiaman's shoulders shook briefly with mirthless laughter. "Not sure me taking care Leader Shaw will serve her any if I have to do it much longer. You two are trapped in here with us, aren't you?"

Rose shook her head sadly. "No. With what's going on here, and the rift releasing so much, I've got all I need. I won't even need the power cell."

The young woman's eyes flared gold, and both the alternate versions of men she knew watched with surprise as a plaintive whirring began to resonate in the room and the TARDIS console materialized at her fingers.

"That- that's the thing you were fiddling with when we arrived!" other-Benton choked out.

"Isn't she beautiful?" Rose said with a faint smile. She walked over to collect the fainted Leader Shaw, carefully avoiding the splashes of green sludge on her way from and back to the TARDIS console, and she rested the unconscious woman upon part of the machinery she knew she wouldn't be needing.

"What are you going to try?" the Brigade Leader asked, his composure breaking to let through puzzlement and a hint of hope.

"Bad Wolf." She smiled faintly when she spotted the quizzical expression of her interlocutor. "I don't understand all of it myself" she added. Her voice turned sorrowful. "And I'm sorry to say you will never know."

The young woman took hold of the TARDIS cell and inserted it back into its regular position at the base of the column, holding onto it and sitting on the ground, her free hand coming to rest on the console. Then golden flames burst all around her silhouette, quickly enveloping the TARDIS console and the woman resting on it.

Then they were gone.

* * *

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart had been passably upset the day the Doctor had informed him he was leaving with Liz for the United States and she might be returning without him. In fairness to the Brigadier, the Doctor had to admit UNIT was thrown into situations well outside of their depth on a regular basis. It was therefore unsurprising that Lethbridge-Stewart would had been stumped by something happening in his absence, and would as a result insist that the Doctor be taken back to the intellectually limited Professor Stahlman's research facility the moment he and Liz landed in Gatwick. The surprise came in the form of who had been sent to meeting him there and drive him to London: two faces from two faces ago, the first two humans he'd taken on board the TARDIS. Faces which brought a sad smile to play on his lips.

"Ian. Barbara."

"Hey, Doctor" Ian replied nonchalantly, his wife standing by his side, her eyes glinting.

The next moment, the Time Lord found himself not knowing what to do with an armful of hugging woman. "We've missed you" Barbara murmured as she held tightly onto him. "We had no idea you'd been back on Earth. Where have you been?"

"In Utah, apparently" the Doctor replied as he disengaged himself awkwardly from Barbara, only to find himself at the end of a stern look.

"You know that's not what I asked, Doctor."

"Barbara" Ian said with a faint smile, turning his attention to the Doctor's companion. "You must be Miss Shaw".

"Doctor Shaw, actually" Liz replied a bit sharply.

"Lots of Doctors in our world these days" Ian shot back, now grinning. "I'm Ian Chesterton, and this is my wife Barbara."

"How do you do?" Barbara greeted with a smile of her own.

"What other Doctors were you talking about?" the Doctor cut in.

"You know most of them already" Ian supplied, walking over to the Doctor. "We've been told you've spent a while working around Professor Joseph Stahlman and his crew."

"I'm pretty sure his name was Eric" the Doctor said, nonplussed, while Liz snorted.

"Joseph suits him a lot better."

The Doctor smiled faintly. "I think it does, Liz."

"How long have you two been traveling together?" Barbara asked the other woman, earning herself a look of confusion.

"Five days? We were pursuing a false lead and were rescued from a murder attempt. And now himself barely remembers why we went there in the first place."

"Life as usual with the Doctor, then" Barbara said with a smile.

Liz grimaced. "There seems to be a lot of that going on around him, yes" she groused. "I imagine you were sent here by the Brigadier?"

"Not me, but I don't care if that arrogant and rude man throws a tantrum" Barbara said tartly.

"The Brigadier doesn't always understand what he knows" the Doctor replied indulgently, "but his heart is usually in the right place."

"And right now he could really do with your assistance" Ian cut in, his tone and expression turning business-like. "He's looking for reasons to get Professor Stahlman to stop his drilling – they've pierced a pocket of highly virulent and dangerous parasites which turn their victims into wild mutants."

"Then the Brigadier already has a reason to get the drilling to be stopped" the Doctor replied sharply, "what else does he needs me for?"

"As an expert witness to present to the Minister of Power."

"He's already got one, if he already knows what's going on."

Ian looked uncomfortably at his wife. "He doesn't any longer. Both Doctor Wolf and Sir Gold have gone missing, and none of the other scientists on site will speak against Professor Stahlman's wishes."

"Gone missing?" Liz asked, her eyes narrowing. "You don't think it's a coincidence, do you?"

"We don't" Ian replied uncomfortably, eyes still on his wife, who frowned at him.

"I'm coming with you" Barbara said sharply.

"Barbara, this is-" Ian tried.

"You've seen how hurt and fragile Rose already is" his wife cut him off. "She's going to need a woman to talk to when we get her back."

"If she stops running away from whatever it is she already didn't want to talk about" Ian grumbled.

"Who's Rose?" Liz inquired, and the other woman turned to her.

"Doctor Wolf." Barbara returned her attention to the Time Lord. "She's not unlike you, I think, just more talkative and traumatized by something. Oh, and she pretends she's a better TARDIS pilot than you are."

A look of pain in the Doctor's eyes told Barbara she'd just hit the wrong nerve. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

The Time Lord gave her a bittersweet smile. "That's quite alright. At least I know there was another Time Lady involved in this matter. It is probably in my interest to help her."

Barbara left it at that, and an awkward silence fell, which the Doctor ended up breaking. "Well then, shall we?"

"Let's" Ian said with a smile. "Doctor Wolf's TARDIS should be ready to be transported now, all we need to do is rejoinder with the convoy – and why are you looking at me like I've grown a second head, Doctor?"

"I would think that it is fairly obvious" the Doctor replied. "You've got a TARDIS, and you've got me. We don't need a convoy, I can take us to our destination directly."

"You are _not_ leaving us behind here, Doctor" Liz cut in sharply.

"My dear Elizabeth, I wouldn't-"

"Don't finish that sentence, Doctor."

The Time Lord smiled sheepishly. "I probably shouldn't."

Ian and Barbara couldn't help but chuckle. "Same old Doctor."

* * *

Knowing Liz was wary of him trying to pull another stunt to get away from Earth didn't stop the Doctor from pondering how he could steal Doctor Wolf's TARDIS and get away with it. What stopped him was spotting the familiar blue Police box loaded on a platform lorry, a sight which instantly told him he could not go through with his plans under any circumstances.

"Where did Doctor Wolf get that TARDIS?" he asked warily.

"She never said" Barbara replied. "She can't have had it for very long, though, she said she was twenty-four."

"And lied" the Doctor grumbled. "I'm the youngest Time Lord who ever owned their own TARDIS, and I was a lot older than twenty-four when I acquired it. A Time Lady _would_ lie to humans about her age."

"She said she was born human" Barbara pointed out.

"And lied again. Only a Time Lord would know enough about piloting a TARDIS, let alone steal one."

"Steal a TARDIS?"

"This is my TARDIS from the future" the Doctor explained in a voice filled with tension. "And it has obviously been stolen from me by this Doctor Wolf of yours. I'll need to get it back to my future self." The Time Lord smiled coldly as he turned to Liz. "Well, it turns out you don't have to worry about me getting away after all. I have to catch this thief the Brigadier hired if I want to redress the wrong done to my future version."

* * *

The Doctor was instantly put off by the TARDIS' appearance when the party entered it. "Look at the mess this thief of ours has made" he said with annoyance at his three companions. "She nearly destroyed my machine, and very nearly took quite a bite out of reality in the process."

"According to Miss Williams, she was actually quite familiar with how the TARDIS functions" Ian replied, "even though her old girl clearly looks nothing like the one Barbara and I have known."

"Old girl?"

"That was what Rose called this TARDIS" Barbara explained, glowering at the Time Lord. "It's an endearment."

"It's ridiculous" the Doctor dismissed. "And look at the mess done with the controls – who in their right mind would set their desktop theme in such a gaudy and ineffective manner?"

An indignant metallic chirp came from one of the walls, making Liz jump.

"Did this machine just… reply?"

"Pure coincidence, Liz" the Doctor said waspishly, prodding at the instruments, "a TARDIS only ever communicates telepathically. It has no need for- ho!" The Time Lord jumped back, and Barbara snorted.

"Did she just shock you?"

"I believe she just did" Ian added, grinning.

"Hrmph." The Doctor shook off his fingers. "Probably a side effect of one of the mistakes the thief has made. Now please let me have a little bit of calm for an instant, I need to concentrate."

Ian and Barbara drew back, joining a very quiet-looking Liz on one of the sides of the control room.

Barbara smiled at her. "First time in the TARDIS?" she murmured.

"First time, yes."

"If it reassures you", Ian said with a smile of his own, "we've never seen the TARDIS like that."

"She looks so _alive_ " Barbara added with wonderment.

"She's also a lot bigger on the inside than on the outside" Liz said weakly.

"Why isn't he doing anything?" Ian asked, his attention having returned to the Doctor. The Time Lord was now holding still, clearly pondering about what he should do.

"These instruments are a lot different from the ones the Doctor is used to" Liz supplied. "And… I don't think he really remembers how to pilot his craft in the first place."

Ian grinned. "He's never really known how to pilot the TARDIS in the first place."

"Right now, he doesn't even know how to do anything other than to make it blink away for a couple of minutes."

"If you are all quite finished, maybe I'll be able to focus on navigating my way through the thief's mess!" the Doctor shot acrimoniously from where he was standing.

The three humans fell into an uneasy silence. It clearly did not help, and the Doctor's irritation only grew as he slowly moved around the console and studied the unfamiliar instruments, trying to make sense of them. And failing. After perhaps five minutes of fruitless observation, the Time Lord let out a frustrated sigh and went over to his companions.

"If I ever get the chance, I will set up a protocol so that my TARDIS can automatically return to its legitimate owner" he grated. "I could really do with the help of my future self in such a situation."

"Then perhaps you already have" Liz remarked.

"I would know if I had set up such an emergency program in my own TARDIS" the Doctor said impatiently.

"Not if you set it up in your future" Liz replied coolly.

As if on cue, a holographic image of a broad-shouldered man in black leather, with a crew cut and large ears, materialized in front of the time rotor.

"This is emergency program three" said a rich voice marked with a northern English accent. "If I'm seeing this, I'm probably being an idiot with no clue what I'm mucking with, but that's okay, this is what I'm taking charge for."

"Not even polite with himself" Ian quipped as the recording went on.

"This program will take the TARDIS back to the last place and location she remembers having detected her owner at, but before you come running after me, there's something I need you to do." The holographic face turned anxious. "Find Rose Tyler. She's probably not going to be great help in locating me, and you'll be annoyed when she stubbornly wanders off in whatever direction she fancies in her own attempt to find me, but I need her safe. She does not know, but she's the reason I'm keeping it together after the horrors I've just been through, and I can't lose that silly human girl. Not now."

"But she's the one who loses him in the end" Barbara realized.

The Doctor looked at her briefly, his expression inscrutable, before his attention returned to the hologram.

"That's it. Now brace yourself, the old girl has grown a little rocky with the passage of years. Then when you arrive, find Rose, ask her where she last saw me, and find me. Oh-" The holographic face grinned, "and don't feel too bad about yourself when you meet me. I'm fantastic. You'll see."

The hologram vanished, and true to its word, the TARDIS came to life. The time rotor ground, the entire ship shook, and moments later, the quartet found themselves inside the Doctor's shed at the research facility, right across from his own version of the TARDIS. And in the middle of the shed, the console and machinery had returned, looking slightly different from the last time the Doctor had experimented with them, and at their feet lay two unmoving women, holding onto one another, one of them wearing the same kind of clothing as the holographic Doctor from earlier and sporting short white hair, and the other-

"But that's me!" sputtered a shocked Liz. "That's impossible!"

Ian and Barbara were already on the move, the latter checking on both women while the former called for the Brigadier. The Doctor, for his part, went to Liz's side, a puzzled frown on his face.

"That's not impossible at all. Can you see her uniform?"

"I can…"

"No organization or militia on this version of Earth wears the insignia it bears. I think we have just met with a version of you from a different, parallel reality. And this other woman…"

"It's Rose Tyler" Barbara cut in, kneeling by her side after having separated both women. "They're both alive with solid heartbeats, but Rose is very cold, and, er-"

"Other-Liz" the Doctor prompted.

"Other-Liz is spiking a high fever."

The Doctor went over to the women, checking on Other Liz first. "Just overheated" he ended up pronouncing. "She must have been exposed to a dangerously warm environment. But she's hit her head pretty hard; that will need being looked at." He proceeded to the unconscious Rose, and the moment he touched her, the colour drained from the Time Lord's face.

"This is impossible" he gritted.

"What's wrong with her?" Barbara asked.

Another attempt at contact lasted for a few seconds longer before the Doctor withdrew.

"I don't know" the Doctor finally replied. "I don't understand what this woman is, and I have a feeling that I shouldn't. But I just remembered I've already seen her."

"Of course you've seen her, Doctor" Liz said a little impatiently, "it's the woman who stopped an impersonator of herself from attempting to murder you a few days ago, like I told you happened. Have you forgotten again?"

"I might have?" the Doctor said, puzzled. Then he smiled mirthlessly. "Yes, she could be the woman. It would make sense."

"What would make sense?" Barbara asked gingerly.

"That I've already forgotten about her. Don't worry about the details of how that works, I just know that we're not supposed to meet until much later in my life. I'm not even supposed to remember I live that long. That kind of knowledge is very dangerous, and it needs to be suppressed."

"But can you help her?"

The Doctor looked with nostalgia at Ian and Barbara, then he nodded. "I might have to do that alone."

"And you are going to forget about meeting us again, aren't you, Doctor?" Ian said wanly, earning himself a nod.

"I am."

"But why?" Barbara asked.

The Doctor mulled over his reply for a moment. "Time Lords have an inbuilt response to meeting their own future selves in order to preserve the integrity of time" he said eventually. "Whenever we are in the presence of a future incarnation of us, any younger version forgets everything that happens at the end of the encounter."

"That doesn't explain why you would forget this encounter" Barbara remarked.

"It will in a moment" the Doctor said quietly, focusing his attention on the unconscious Rose. "The long and short of it is this young lady seems to have suffered a terrible accident which could have ended up erasing her from reality if left untreated. Apparently, stopping that from happening involved a graft of my own tissue onto her – which is not supposed to be possible but has definitely happened."

All three humans gaped at the Doctor.

It was Liz who recovered first. "Someday, you'll care enough about one of those humans you currently look down upon to give them a part of yourself" she let trail. Then she fixed her gaze on the Time Lord, her expression hardening. "You're going to forget that you'll find a reason to start caring about us silly apes, aren't you?" she said waspishly, and the Doctor cringed.

"The Doctor is many times cleverer and many times more knowledgeable than the average human" Barbara defended him. "Why shouldn't he feel superior to us?"

Liz looked down at her counterpart for an instant. "I'm a doctor myself" she ended up replying. "I've worked very hard to get to where I am, learned a lot in the process, am good enough in my fields UNIT sought me out and, forgive the immodesty, I'm a bit of a genius myself. You don't see me constantly reminding people of how I'm superior to them in those areas."

A mumble came from the ground. "S'not his fault. 's rude 'n not ginger."

Barbara looked down and sighed with relief. "Rose. You're alright."

"Need to hurry…" the young woman wheezed. "Stop the drill… Alien parasites… Rift in space time…"

The Doctor looked at Rose inquisitively. "Are you absolutely certain?"

"Was in parallel world… Same thing happening… Microinvaders… Rift is leaking…"

The Doctor closed his eyes and nodded. "I'll take care of it."

* * *

Three hours later, the Doctor came back to see Rose in the infirmary where she and a still unconscious other-Liz had been moved. The Doctor's version of Liz was also present, sitting at her alternate version's bedside, and Barbara was keeping Rose company.

"It's done" the Doctor said simply as he entered. "They've arrested Professor Stahlman and stopped the drill. They've also confined the mutants, but have no idea what to do with them."

"I can take them to a planet that'll be good for them with my TARDIS after I'm done fixing her" Rose replied quietly.

The Doctor frowned. "You shouldn't even attempt to do that. You've already made enough of a mess of it to-"

"The Master turned her into a paradox machine" Rose cut in. "And I can fix her. I've been doing maintenance on her for a while now, and I've got the manual."

The Doctor grimaced. "Why didn't I even think of that?"

Silence lingered for a moment, and the Time Lord reined in his control as his gaze lingered on the golden-eyed woman.

"It's the second time you're looking at this woman like she's an enigma, Doctor" Liz said from her place besides her parallel version.

The Doctor looked at his companion, and mulled over his response for a few seconds. "There's a legend on my homeworld, about a creature which will bring our end. We call it the Hybrid, because it is exactly that, a hybrid of two warrior races." The Time Lord's eyes returned to Rose, who let out a groan.

"Let me guess. You're thinking it could be me."

"You're the result of some cross between a human and a Time Lord, two warrior races" the Doctor replied levelly. "You are, however, not quite fitting that legend, because you're not just a cross between warrior races." He missed the look of relief Rose sent him, and forged on. "You are also a TARDIS hybrid, and presumably this combination of species has resulted in an organism that can sustain a physical link with the Time Vortex without being erased from reality, just like a TARDIS would. There's no telling what you can or cannot do."

"Yeah, well, I'm not interested in finding out" Rose said sombrely, fingers drumming on her bedsheets. "I'd much rather be back to being Rose Tyler, _homo sapiens sapiens_."

"Why would you?" the Doctor asked with bafflement. "You're the beginning of a new species, with near-unlimited potential. Why would you rather be human?"

"Because she used to be human?" Liz said waspishly. "You were, weren't you?" she added for Rose. "Barbara and Ian said you were, and his older self definitely seemed to think so."

"You've met an older version of the Doctor?" Rose asked eagerly, only to deflate when she spotted Liz's grimace.

"Only a hologram on your TARDIS. Dressed just like you were when we found you, with big ears, a soldier's hairdo, and as insufferably arrogant as this one here. Called you a silly little human."

Rose snorted. "That beats being called a stupid ape like he often did."

"Seen from my point of view, that's an accurate description of the species" the Doctor said defensively, earning himself a glare from his companion.

"See? That's what I was talking about" she said furiously. "You just _have_ to make us feel inferior – and don't act like you care either, I've had to keep up with you attempting to ditch us every chance you got for an entire year, no matter what crisis we were facing at the time. Not even the whole planet being in danger stopped you."

The Doctor was about to retort, but stopped himself when he noticed the stare of two golden eyes levelled at him. "You tried to leave them behind while Earth was in danger?"

The Time Lord grunted. "Time and space machine" he said mulishly. "I could have returned the second after I'd have finally managed to leave."

"I've seen you blundering about your TARDIS enough to know you could never be certain of that, Doctor" Liz shot at him. "It never stopped you."

The Doctor sighed. "If I find a way to get it right once, I'll be able to get it right again." He offered Liz a tentative smile. "As soon as I do manage to fix my TARDIS you'll get to see, I promise."

"No, I won't" Liz replied harshly. "You're already insufferable enough when you're stuck on Earth, and you would be even worse when you weren't."

"Liz" Rose attempted, but the older woman ignored her.

"No. I'm done. All that he wants out of a companion is someone to hold his test tubes and tell him how clever he is, and I'm not going to be that person for him anymore. And I'll make sure the Brigadier knows what the Doctor really needs for his next assistant."

Liz stormed out of the room, shutting its door on a mortified-looking Doctor and a thoughtful Rose Tyler.

It took the Doctor a couple of tries to make himself speak. "Who are you to me in the future?" he said with a hint of bitterness; he didn't give Rose time to reply. "According to older me, you're the reason he's 'keeping it together.' What does that even mean? Did he grow so callous that he needs someone like you acting as his conscience?"

"You just can't stand being alone after having had to do something terrible" Rose replied quietly. "But you don't really need me as your conscience. The version of you I meet first is already the very best of all Time Lords."

"Liz certainly doesn't seem to think I'm a good person" the Doctor pointed out bitterly. "And you probably don't either."

"That's not true" Rose replied, and she got out of her bed and sat up on its side, facing the Doctor. "I think you're a man who hates being stuck on Earth when he's used to traveling all over time and space. And I already know enough about your past to know you do the right thing when it comes down to it. You're really just a prisoner of the Time Lords trying to escape an unfair punishment, but nobody around you knows that, do they?"

The Doctor sighed. "I can't tell the humans. They might decide accepting my help when it's needed could be too dangerous for them, in case my own species decided to get involved and to stop me from interfering with events. It could already have doomed their planet a couple of times."

"And you're quite fond of humans, aren't you, Doctor?" Rose said kindly, idly drumming her fingers on the bedside.

"I didn't use to be" the Time Lord admitted. "Ian and Barbara changed that. It's largely thanks to them I've become the person I am."

Rose didn't reply. She just smiled at the Doctor.

"Can I ask you a favour?" the Time Lord eventually said.

"It depends" Rose replied.

"Could you take them along for another trip in time and space?" the Doctor asked. "I'm going to forget that I've seen them again and probably will keep well away from them in the future. But I'd like for them to be offered the one last trip I never got a chance to give them."

Rose beamed at the Doctor. "I can do that."

And that was how, a few days later and thirty-eight years earlier, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright got to return to the Empire State Building…

* * *

 **A/N:** It's about time Rose met the Daleks again... ^^ Not sure Ian and Barbara missed them all that much either...

Thanks to **LilienRose** , **Miss Dany** , **Lena 'Slipstream' Oxton** , **Alpha007** and the unnamed guest who reviewed, and see you all... soonish... ^^


	4. III - Daleks in Manhattan

**A/N:** I think I'm going to buy one share in the BBC. That way, I would own a little bit of Doctor Who ;)

* * *

 **Ellis Island, 1901**

* * *

When the agitation caused by land-sight being made turned to a near-riot, and the entire complement of passengers ran up on-deck, the boy didn't immediately understand what was going on. It didn't help that most of the passengers didn't speak his language. By the time he had caught enough to understand what the fuss was about, it had become impossible to find a spot near the railings, and people were crammed to the limit on any upraised element of the deck the crew let them climb on, hungry for their first sight of the Statue of Liberty – the first visible sign that they had made it to the New World. The first sign that they had made it to their new lives.

There would be a new life beginning for the boy as well, but not one he'd chosen. He'd barely escaped Sicily thanks to the goodwill of a few people from his hometown, who had been willing to defy the unofficial ruler of the town and surrounding villages after the boy's father, brother and mother had all been killed. The boy would have been too, had he not run off. Don Ciccio hadn't cared that the boy was only nine years old, just that would he would grow up and become a man, and may very well attempt to avenge his father and brother – and the mother he'd killed in front of him when she'd tried to parlay for her youngest son's life.

Don Ciccio was right. The boy certainly intended to avenge his family. But there would be a very long road ahead, and at the start of it he would be nothing, a lonely boy with no place in the world, bereft of any importance, with very little understanding of his new world, and with very little strength of his own. Not even the strength to make a little room for himself and watch-

"Want to take a look?"

The question in Italian caught the boy by surprise. He swung round, bracing himself reflexively, only to see the young woman who'd addressed him was offering a mischievous tongue-touched grin and the warm look of strange golden eyes. The boy was wary, and the all-black, leather jacket look and the mane of snow-white hair made the woman stand out even further among the throngs of the migrants who crowded the deck. Yet none really paid attention to her; their focus was on the sight the boy was being deprived of.

The woman noticed his wariness, and her look turned sad. "You've been hurt a lot already by the adults around you, haven't you?" she said with pity. It stung the boy's pride a little, but at least it seemed the woman wasn't going to be immediately threatening, although she did intrude in his personal space as she crouched to look him in the eyes.

"You know why everybody is standing on top of one another right now, don't you?" she asked rhetorically. "The first sighting is a wonderful experience, a really enchanting one, the kind you remember for the rest of your life. I got on deck a little late, though", and the young woman grimaced, "so I won't get to see it this time around, but there's no reason why you shouldn't, right?"

The woman gestured at the boy in a clear invitation to climb on. Truth be told, the boy didn't really have much heart for enchanting sights at the moment. But he knew she was right about this being a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and he nodded, signifying his acceptance. The woman hoisted him with surprising ease, and the boy found a precarious perch on her shoulder, supported by the woman's cool hand. Then the woman turned around, and the boy looked in silence at the Statue of Liberty standing ahead and the city beyond, drinking in the sights.

"Like it?" the young woman asked him. The boy looked down briefly; the white-maned woman was giving him a warm smile. He nodded back, before returning his attention to the display he now could enjoy. And it was only a while later, after the kind stranger had left him and he was disembarking, that the boy realized he had been smiling for the first time since his mother had died.

The boy saw the young woman again an hour later – she had joined one of the very long lines leading to the officers clearing migrants for admission, right behind the young boy. The young woman clearly wasn't a very patient person, judging by the light four-beat tap of her foot on the floor when the queue was still, but she didn't engage him in conversation again. Not being addressed suited the boy just fine, but the presence of a person well-disposed towards him and who could speak Italian brought him a feeling of safety he hadn't enjoyed for months. Her kindness manifested again when a nurse approached them, and she explained they were doing a quick check to see if the boy was sick – and he certainly was, although he'd done his best to hide his weakness from the other passengers, afraid they'd take advantage and take what little he had with him.

The woman also offered to interpret for him once he finally reached the counter and the desk officer asked him a question in English. The boy would have to learn English fast, if he didn't want to stay helpless and uncomprehending in this unfamiliar new world, but for now he had to rely on his chance helper, who had just reached for the cardboard tag that had been attached to him and said aloud "his name is Vito Corleone".

For an instant, the arbitrary changing of his name felt like a betrayal, and the boy was tempted to speak his first words since his mother had died to protest, to say his name was Andolini – but for an instant only. He was marked for death, and changing his name would offer a solid measure of protection from anyone who might attempt to track him based on information given in Sicily, even by people who lived in his hometown. Corleone.

On second thought, the boy didn't mind being named after his hometown. Besides, he rather liked how Vito Corleone rolled. It sounded like a name you could respect.

Presently, Vito was being taken away to a medical examination area, at the entrance of which graphic signs clearly indicated sexes would be segregated, and he realized he had just been parted from his chance companion; he was surprised that the fact upset him. The boy understood better later, after being told he had been diagnosed as having caught typhoid fever, and that he would be quarantined three months (unspoken were the words "if you survive"). The white-haired woman had been kind to him. He wouldn't have wanted to infect her; it made that separation more acceptable.

Later on, as he grew up and learned to adapt to the New World, the boy would reflect on how he would have liked to know the name of his protector of a couple of hours. It was the one thing taunting him on the scrap of paper she had somehow slipped inside one of his pockets, telling him to have heart, thanking him for letting her do a little for him, and promising him that one day he would be able to smile again. The note had been signed in English, which Vito had had translated for him as soon as he could. But all he had to remember the first stranger who was kind to him in the New World was a nickname – the Bad Wolf.

Retrospectively, Vito Corleone would understand the woman must also have had her secrets, and reasons not to want to be known by her own name either, a fact inferring there was more to the confident young woman than met the eye. But he didn't think he would ever truly find out who she was, and doubted he would meet her again.

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf**

 **III. Daleks in Manhattan  
**

* * *

Rose stepped out of the TARDIS to find herself buffeted by a strong gust of wind which blew strands of mid-length white hair in her face. She giggled and shouted for the two people following her out of the time and space ship.

"Atlantic breeze, got to love it!"

"You certainly seem to be enjoying yourself" Ian Chesterton said with an amused look at the young woman. His wife Barbara seemed a little less enchanted by the scenery than he was.

"You've been here before, haven't you?"

"In New York?" Rose replied, turning around to face the couple. "Nope, never came here before – not that I shouldn't have, but somehow the Doctor always managed to miss his mark and land somewhere in the good old UK. And look!" the young woman added, her eyes gleaming with excitement and gesturing. "There she is, the Statue of Liberty herself! Good thing she's not a Weeping Angel" she added in a ramble, "thing this size, I don't want to imagine how many people it'd need to send back to last until its next meal."

"You're not making sense. Again" Barbara said flatly.

"And I told you it's rude to ask a lady her age" Rose replied with a tongue-touched grin. "I told you, took some time off, fixed the TARDIS, travelled around a bit, came back for you when I felt ready. The rest is just little things in between."

Barbara was about to fire a reply off, but held back when her husband laid a hand on her arm. "Want a solid reason to tell Miss Wolf off?" Ian said lightly, earning himself a puzzled look from his wife. "She said we'd get to enjoy the view from the top of the Empire State Building, but construction is still ongoing."

"You've got to be kidding me" Rose said, whipping around to look at the skyline, and spinning back on her heel just as quickly to glare at the TARDIS. "Old girl, when I meant the 30s, it meant I wanted to visit the finished thing, not take a look at the works."

To which the TARDIS replied by slamming her door shut, prompting Ian to laugh and Barbara to stare.

"Did we just get shut out of your ship by your ship?" the woman asked, and Rose huffed before she replied.

"Old girl's grown temperamental ever since the Master messed with her."

"The Master?"

"Still not telling" Rose groused, fingers drumming briefly on crossed arms before she whirled around again. "So, let's figure out when we are."

"November 1st, 1930" Ian said casually as he strolled over to a nearby low park bench.

Rose looked at him with a frown. "Have you already been there on that day?"

"No, he spotted the newspaper that stayed behind on the bench" Barbara commented as her husband liberated the pages from where they'd stuck and stayed flapping in the breeze.

"Little damp but legible" he commented.

"Let me guess, we're going on an adventure?" his wife said lightly.

"You two don't have to act so _blasé_ about this, you know" Rose groused.

"We just happen to have prior experience" Ian said with a grin, before folding the newspaper and tossing it over to his wife, who caught it deftly. "There you go, honey."

"Thanks" Barbara replied, unfolding the pages again. "Hooverville mystery deepens" she read with a light frown. "Now that sounds like the kind of thing nobody else would bother investigating."

"Where's Hooverville?" Rose asked, and Barbara gave her a sad look.

"Central Park. A lot of people ruined by the Great Depression found refuge there, and the local authorities know better than to just kick them out."

"Oh, right. One year after Black Tuesday, and Johnny Aspirator is twiddling his thumbs."

"It's a bit of an exaggeration and it's Herbert Hoover" Barbara corrected.

"So, nicknaming people you don't like isn't a one-time occurrence" Ian observed, and Rose shrugged.

"If the shoe fits…"

Barbara was now smiling. "I almost wish you'd known and travelled with our Doctor."

"Not sure I would have enjoyed it that much after meeting misters Three and Five" Rose groused, and Barbara's smile turned mischievous.

" _We_ would have enjoyed it. All those sparks flying."

Rose gave the woman an indignant look, and Ian chuckled. "Let's head on to Central Park before the good Doctor Wolf decides we need a nickname too."

"Bad Wolf" Rose stated firmly. "As far as everybody is concerned, I'm the Bad Wolf."

"That's a little weird and rather noticeable" Barbara pointed out.

"I want it to be noticed" Rose said fiercely, golden eyes glinting. "It's a message for people with bad intentions out there. Bit like how they should be worried about the Doctor being around. I'm not quite him, know a lot less than he does, but if that name can stop people messing with other people when it's heard, being noticed saves this many more lives. And the Bad Wolf is beginning to rack up quite the count of bad people stopped."

"You could have gone around using Doctor Wolf" Ian pointed out, and Rose shook her head.

"I'm not the Doctor" she said matter-of-factly. "And I don't want people to think I could be him. I have to do things he wouldn't approve of to get by."

* * *

Ian and Barbara weren't uncomfortable making their way through the Hooverville shanty town any more than Rose was – the trio were all experienced time travellers, used to far worse aggressions on their senses. It didn't stop Barbara from being a bit saddened.

"It's one thing to know Central Park housed such a community intellectually, but it's quite another to see it with your own eyes."

"That it is" Ian agreed, his eyes wandering about. "There's a lot of tension here."

"Lots of people thrown into poverty and having to adjust, and it's hard" Rose mused. "Does an awful lot to your sense of self, poverty."

"How long does it last?" Ian asked, and his wife offered.

"1934. The people who live here are evacuated after the new mayor restarts cheaper plans for the Great Lawn. But that's just one Hooverville. There were hundreds of those across the United States, and some of them lasted well into the 40s."

"You thieving lowlife!"

A crash followed the words, and a scuffle broke between an angry black man and a stick-thin white man.

Rose leapt into action before his companions realized her intentions, getting to both men in a few quick strides and pushing them apart with surprising strength.

"What's the matter with you?" the black man growled, pushing against Rose, and the other man tried to take advantage to get away – only to get grabbed at by his collar by the young woman's hand.

"Not so fast, mate, you've got some explaining to do."

"You're just as crazy as he is!" the white man protested indignantly.

"And you're a goddamn thief! You stole my bread!"

The angry man tried to get at the other once again, only to be held back by the significantly smaller woman.

"The pair of you cut that out" she growled, before turning her attention to the white man. "You're going to give the man back his loaf of bread."

"I didn't take it!"

"You goddamn liar!"

"And you", and Rose now looked at the other man, "are not going to kick that man down" she said before sharply tugging at both collars and letting them go. The white man's eyes darted around, but Ian was now behind him.

"Don't try it" Rose's companion advised, and finally, sulking as he did so, the man fished out a somewhat damaged loaf of dark bread from where he'd stowed it, handing it over to the smaller woman.

"I'm starving" the man grunted.

"I know" Rose said calmly. "I've been there. Poverty sucks. But you guys are all in this together. You can't steal from one another. You're hungry, but if you steal from the next man, he's going to go hungry too, and if enough people steal to get by you'll end up at one another's throats before you know it, people are going to die, and this messed-up world wins. You don't want that, do you?"

"No" the man agreed reluctantly. "I don't want that."

The gathered onlookers parted just enough to let a bearded man pass and approach the group.

"What's going on, here?" the man asked levelly.

Rose gave the man a significant look at the thief. The man looked down.

"I'm starving, Solomon. I stole the bread."

The man shook his head. "You know the rules. No stealing and no fighting."

Rose held out the loaf to the bearded man, who took it and looked at her, and then at her companions. "You stopped the fight?"

"The whitehead did" a man in the crowd answered. "Thought she was gonna get squished, but she held 'er own."

"Thanks, Phil" Solomon said with a nod. "And thank you, Madam…?"

Rose grinned at her interlocutor. "Wolf. Bad Wolf."

Ian snorted, and Barbara tutted a "Honestly" before stepping up to address Solomon. "She's on the run and doesn't use her name. I'm Barbara Chesterton, and this is my husband Ian."

"The three of you British?" Solomon asked with mild interest.

"Yes."

The man snorted. "Hooverville's getting a little more international every week."

"I'd like my bread back" the black man cut in, and Solomon made to speak, but Rose beat him to the punch.

"I know you're angry, but look at the man" she said.

A harrumph. "I'm looking. He's a thief."

"A good number of us are" Rose replied, earning herself a few protests she cut off by a stern "We are. Shoplifting's thieving even when you're hungry, and I'm dead sure I'm not the only one who's had to do something like that to get by. But what you don't do," and she stepped up to the would-be thief and prodded him in the chest, "is steal from your mate. Baker can live without a loaf of bread or three, he's got plenty more where those came from. Your mate doesn't. And you, him, the rest of the folks here, you're all mates."

"He tried to steal from me, we aren't going to be mates" the black man growled, and Rose turned up to him, staring him down.

"You already are" she said quietly, and she gestured towards the gathering around them. "You all, you're like soldiers stuck together in a war against misery, like your folks were in 1863 and again in 1918. Only difference being, misery, she has no guns, she's never there so you can shoot back at her, but that doesn't mean she's not trying her damnedest to kill you all, and she doesn't care who goes first. All you're doing when you fight each other, when you steal from each other, you're helping misery win. Sure, you might win yourself respite for a day or two, but that's not gonna work. See, the thing is, misery, she's patient. She's gonna pick off that guy you stepped on, and then she's coming back for you, and those other guys who know you don't care about them, they're just gonna toss you at her just so they don't have to worry about you anymore. You still lose, only a bit later, and misery, she wins twice." Rose looked around at the crowd, and then her gaze went back to the pair she'd stopped. "You're in this together."

The black man looked at Solomon, who nodded back at him. He grunted. "Give him half of my loaf, Solomon."

The bearded man cut the bread in half, handing the black man his share first, and then the would-be thief's own. The latter man looked at Solomon, who pointedly looked at the black man.

"Thanks" the white man mumbled. The black man grunted, and the crowd began to disperse, leaving the man named Solomon looking upon the newcomers.

"You're not just on the run, you've been living on the streets" he said to Rose, who frowned.

"I did once." She made a quick computation. "Shortly after the war. Tough times in England."

"You lived on the streets as a kid?"

Rose gave a non-committal shrug, and Barbara cut in: "She doesn't like to talk about her past."

"I can imagine" Solomon grunted. "And the pair of you?"

"We're teachers" Barbara replied.

Solomon gratified her with a sardonic smile. "Bit surprised we didn't get any of you before today. We've already got stockbrokers, we got a lawyer. Would be nice if we got a doctor, we could use one."

"Sorry, you're stuck with a wolf" Rose said with a faint smile.

"How many people live here?" Ian inquired, looking around at the shantytown.

"Hundreds at any one time" Solomon replied with a shrug. "Don't exactly keep a head count. A few more folks come in every day, to join our little egalitarian society."

"Doesn't matter who you are, what you were or what colour you are, you're all starving" Barbara muttered.

"Right on" Solomon said. "The two of you are people of learning, right?" Barbara nodded, and he went on. "Explain this to me. That there's going to be the tallest building in the world" he said, looking towards the nearly erect Empire State Building. "How come they can do that, when we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?"

"Because the people building that aren't the ones who're starving" Rose commented quietly, catching Solomon's look again. "You're still noticeable enough to make the morning papers" the young woman added. "There's talk of a Hooverville mystery. People are going missing?"

"How would journalists even notice?" Ian commented, puzzled. "People come and go all the time."

"Witness accounts, I guess" Rose said.

"How would the witnesses know?"

Rose's eyes went back from Ian to Solomon. "They're leaving their stuff behind, right?"

The bearded man nodded. "Someone takes them, at night. We hear something, someone calls out for help. By the time we get there, they're gone like they vanished into thin air."

"Have you been to the police?" Barbara asked, and Solomon snorted.

"Yeah, we tried that. Another deadbeat goes missing. Big deal."

"But someone's taking them" Rose said thoughtfully, her fingers idly drumming on her forearms. "Who takes them, and what for?"

Another man came, hollering. "Solomon! Mister Diagoras is here."

"Mister Diagoras?" Rose asked the bearded man, who grunted.

"One of the foremen who come every now and then and offer work for a pittance."

"Do people survive the jobs he offers?"

"Not always. It's often dangerous work that gets offered, and not everyone can afford to say 'no' to the foremen. When you're hungry, you've got to do what you've got to do."

"Yeah, I'm familiar with that" Rose let trail, and she headed off towards the man who'd hollered, Ian, Barbara and Solomon following.

Mister Diagoras turned out to be an impeccably suited man in his late thirties or early forties, with short black hair, a square jaw and cold brown eyes. The moment enough people had gathered within hearing range, he went straight to the point.

"I need men. Volunteers. I've got a little work for you and you sure look like you can use the money."

"What is the money?" the man who'd come to fetch Solomon hollered.

"A dollar a day" Diagoras replied flatly.

Solomon stood forward. "What's the work?"

"A little trip down the sewers. Got a tunnel collapsed that needs clearing and fixing. Any takers?"

Solomon shook his head. "A dollar a day? That's slave-wage. And men don't always come back up, do they?"

Diagoras shrugged. "Accidents happen."

"What sort of accidents?" Rose asked, stepping forward, and Solomon held out a hand to stop her.

"I can't let you do that" he said sternly. "It's not a job for someone your size, Miss Bad Wolf."

Rose missed the reaction from the man who'd come to get them. She opened her mouth to protest, but Ian cut her off.

"I'll go, and I'll tell you." The man raised his hand and spoke louder for Diagoras. "I'm volunteering!"

"I am so killing you for this" Barbara mumbled as her hand also went up, and Ian grinned back at her.

"Anybody else?" Solomon's hand was the only other that went up. Rose made to raise her own hand anyway, but the man who'd got her there laid a firm hand on her shoulder.

"What the-"

"You've got somewhere else you should be" the man said quietly. "And it's really not a good idea for me to let you take that risk."

"You're being threatened" Rose deduced, but the man shook his head.

"You'll understand after I've introduced you to my godfather."

* * *

Nobody particularly cared about two people walking out of Hooverville; the few glances the pair received were due to Rose's distinctive white hair. They made their way towards the Italian part of town, and stopped in front of a nondescript looking office of a small company named Genco's Olive Oil. A burly tanned man went to stop the two from Hooverville.

"What are you doing here, Frankie?" he asked in Italian, getting a response in the same language.

"I found a Bad Wolf."

The burly man looked at Rose in surprise. "She's not even Italian."

"No, but from what I saw, she could be the article."

The burly man shook his head. "She's clearly too young."

"She's also there, in case you failed to notice" Rose said tartly. The burly man attempted a scowl, but flinched when he found himself having to hold the glare of gilded irises.

The man tried to gather himself, but was cut off when the glass door to the offices opened, letting through a thin, elegant, moustachioed man, his hair a lustrous black. The burly man turned at the newcomer and looked at him with surprise.

"Godfather?"

"You can let her in, Vincenzo" the man replied in English, with a voice that went barely above a murmur. He turned to Rose's escort. "Thank you for bringing her, Frankie, I'm most grateful."

Rose was surprised to see the man incline his head respectfully. "Godfather."

The thin man turned his attention to Rose. "Do come in" he said, and then he went to hold the door for her in a simple and elegant gesture.

The office looked almost like any other ordinary ground floor office with a street view, just cosy enough for its occupants to endure longer work days. The one exception to the ordinary picture was the pin another thin, affable looking man removed from under the door handle after it had been closed. Rose decided to let it slide – she could easily sonic the door open again if needed – and turned back her attention to the 'godfather', who held out a hand towards the man.

"This is Genco Abbadando, a long-time and very close friend. Genco", and the man then looked at his friend, "meet the Bad Wolf, the woman to whom I owe being called Corleone."

"Do you?" Rose said with surprise, and Corleone chuckled.

"It will have been twenty-nine years tomorrow, but for you, helping a mute and sick boy through customs and offering him his first view of the Statue of Liberty must have felt like any ordinary day." The man looked her over. "You haven't changed."

Rose tensed a bit, and the 'godfather' added a "You can trust our silence. On my honour as a Sicilian, nobody will find out what you have to tell us."

"Mind if I think what to say while we get seated?" Rose asked back quietly.

"Of course not" Corleone said. "Shall I interest you in a drink?"

"No, thank you" Rose replied, seating herself on the visitor's side of the desk. The man named Genco took another chair and seated himself to her left, while Corleone sat down across from them.

Rose looked at the two men for a moment, getting small, friendly smiles back. "Today's the first time I've ever seen the Statue of Liberty" she finally said. "Better you don't tell me anything about what happened when we met before, it's still in my future."

The jaw of the man seated next to Rose nearly dropped, but the 'godfather' seemed to take it in stride. "I knew all this time there was something very different about you. You're a time traveller."

"I am" Rose corroborated. "I'm also travelling with two friends who are busy investigating what's going on in Hooverville, I'll need to get back to them and help as soon as is possible."

Besides her, Genco had recovered. "Should I call Frankie back?" he said, half-standing.

The 'godfather' shook his head. "We already know what he knows, and that's not very much."

"You're investigating the disappearances in Hooverville?" Rose asked, and the man shook his head.

"I'm just making sure it's not affecting my _paisans_. I don't have the resources to look after everyone in New York; I need to look after my own."

"These people have nobody looking after them" the time traveller pointed out.

"I don't think that's true" Genco said next to her, and his friend nodded, before turning back to Rose.

"They have you, now."

"And I have a feeling they couldn't have a better protector" Genco added, making Rose wince.

"Laying it a bit thick, aren't you?"

Genco chuckled, and the 'godfather' smiled.

"Genco has always been good at reading people." His smile faded. "There's a man you need to be careful about if you're going to be looking around Hooverville, a Mister Diagoras."

"I've seen him" Rose commented. "Quartermaster of sorts, but really looking to hire temp slaves."

"He's more than that" Genco said. "There's a very high rise building that's nearly done being built in Manhattan, tallest in all of New York. Diagoras is the man who says who can work there and who can't, and there's nobody we know that can influence him."

Rose quirked an eyebrow. "That's weird, he definitely looks the type you can buy off."

Corleone nodded. "Whoever is behind him is very dangerous, not just because they're rich or influential, but because nobody can find out who they are, and a lot of people who know a lot of things have been looking."

Rose winced. "Then I really need to get back to Ian and Barbara" she said tensely. "Then I'll try and get to the bottom of things regarding mysterious Mister Diagoras."

"I knew she was going to say that" Genco said with a smile, which his friend returned.

"And I have a feeling she knows what she's doing" the man replied, before turning to Rose again. "When you're back in Hooverville, if you need something done you or your friends are too busy to handle, talk to Frankie. Tell him his Godfather owes you a favour, and tell him what you want. If it's within my possibilities, I'll do it."

Rose frowned a bit. "You'll want to know what's really going on in return, won't you?"

The Godfather shook his head. "I'm the one who owes you already. I owe you for setting me on the path I now walk, and I owe you for a kindness to a complete stranger."

Rose flinched a little at that. "I'll have to ask you to tell me a little more about this when I'm done in Hooverville, but right now, I really need to go."

"Of course" the man said, standing up. "Genco, would you…?"

"Don't bother" Rose said as she rose and reached to shake both men's hands. They both watched with a hint of curiosity as the young woman made a show of rummaging through her pockets and took out… a pin, to replace the one that had gone out of the door. Rose let herself out, followed by Genco's chuckles.

"She is indeed quite something, that woman" the man said after closing the door again. "I wonder what exactly, though."

"She's a benevolent force in a dark and cruel world" the Godfather replied seriously. "And that is all I need to know."

* * *

Ian was waiting for Rose when she returned to Hooverville. The man looked a bit worse for wear, and his attitude was all-business when he addressed the time traveller.

"Pig men" the man said without preamble. "That's who's behind the kidnappings, pig men. They're hiding in the sewers."

"Hold a sec', pig men, as in, half pig, half men?"

"More like men with pig heads and a violent disposition. They took Solomon."

Rose groaned. "Oh no… Tell me this isn't another attempt at blowing Earth up by the Slitheen."

"I have no idea" Ian admitted. "There's something else we found down there, just not sure what. I've left it with Barbara back at a show hall."

"I have a feeling you've had quite the adventure. Fill me in on the way to the hall?"

Ian did just that as the pair made their way to a close and rather seedy part of town, explaining about how there was actually no blockage to clear out for Mister Diagoras, and how this had instead been a trap. He also explained that the finding made down in the sewers was some kind of alien organism neither Barbara nor him had ever encountered before. And he briefly explained their escape until they managed to climb into the hall, and ended up encountering a Tallulah, "with three L's and an H", whose fiancé had apparently vanished.

All this made Rose rather curious as she was ushered backstage inside the rickety show hall, to meet with a cleaned-up but disgusted Barbara. "The thing Ian told you about is over there" she said, pointing at a props table where some sickly green and putrid-smelling thing was lying. Something Rose nevertheless managed to recognize as she came close – the general shape and the position of the eye gave it away.

"Dalek…" she said tensely.

Barbara looked at her with shock. "What?"

"That's a Dalek" Rose replied, fingers drumming nervously together. "A dead Dalek, that's what they look like inside their shell – was there a shell?"

"No, that thing was just dumped on a pile of other refuse" Ian replied with a grimace.

"Okay, this is getting worse by the minute" Rose gritted out. "Not too many things can take a Dalek out of its shell, and all of those things are really, really bad news, and pig-human hybrids definitely aren't on that list."

Barbara and Ian exchanged looks. "She is about to try and send us off" Ian said conversationally.

"And we're not going to let that happen" Barbara replied pleasantly. "After all, we've got quite a bit of experience with regards to confronting and escaping Daleks."

"Definitely. Even been on their homeworld and escaped one of their fortresses."

"Oh, right, we did tell her about that!"

Rose shook her head. "I can't believe the pair of you. Have you forgotten how dangerous Daleks are?"

"No, we haven't" Ian replied, just as serious, and Barbara had the same tone when she spoke.

"We never abandoned anyone because they had to face the Daleks, and we're not going to start now."

"I just said what's here could be a lot worse than Daleks" Rose said through gritted teeth.

"Which probably isn't going to stop you from going down into the sewers and attempt to get caught by those pig men to see who's controlling them" Barbara pointed out.

"I just hope it's not really Daleks again" Ian said with a wince. "That'd be the second time we can't enjoy a visit of the Empire State Building because of them."

Rose was about to say something when a piercing shriek resounded in the hallway outside. The trio of time travellers ran out, arriving in sight of a panicked blonde woman wearing a spectacle outfit. "I jus' saw a pig man!" the woman exclaimed herself the moment she spotted Ian and Barbara, making a beeline for them. "What exactly's goin' on?"

"If you tell us where it went, we're going to find out" Ian said.

"Storage in the back, where you two came from" the woman replied, now breathing rapidly. "Who's the white-head?"

Rose grinned at her. "Just a wolf, off to hunt with my pack, Tallulah with three L's and an H".

"How'd'you know my name?"

"Tell you another time, I need to go and get myself taken prisoner."

Rose broke into a run and brushed past the woman, who squawked in protest and turned to Ian and Barbara. The time traveller dropped more than she climbed down into the sewers, landing just in time to catch a glimpse of the pig man turning a corner.

"Oh no, you don't" she growled, taking off at a run, trying to follow the sounds of the creature getting away. Except there was a little problem – a good few more humanoids were running about in the vicinity, and most of them were heading _towards_ Rose, and a couple of oinks informed her precisely about who was after her.

The young woman stopped, and she blinked. "Ah well. Getting what I wanted either way." She waited for the pig men to round on her, foot idly tapping on the floor. "What took you so long?" she said to the one who advanced on her.

The pig man didn't reply; he grabbed hold of her with rather less strength than what Rose had expected, and frog-marched the time traveller to join with a small column of terrified humans, among which she spotted Solomon. The man looked like he'd taken quite the beating, but he was capable of standing up, and apparently of making grim humour. "I thought the wolf was the one going after the pigs in the children tales" he said.

Rose smiled faintly before she let out a bleat, catching most of the people around by surprise. "Sorry" she said as a pig man nudged her forwards. Solomon must have gotten her message, going by the shrewd look she caught him giving her. A wolf in sheep's clothing indeed. That would work better for Rose, be it Daleks or Dalek hunters she was going up against.

The group was led to a collector and made to stand in a line, and Rose got her answer: a pair of Daleks arrived, one of them missing part of its casing, and they began exchanging.

"Re-port!" the one with the full casing ordered.

"These-are-strong-specimens. This-will-help-the-Da-lek-cause."

"I was going sheep, not guinea pig" Rose muttered next to Solomon, fingers drumming nervously.

"What-is-the-sta-tus-of-the-Fi-nal-Ex-pe-riment?" the leading Dalek asked again.

"The-Da-le-kanium-is-in-place. The-energy-conductor-is-com-plete."

"Then-I-will-ex-tract-prisoners-for-se-lec-tion."

A pigman pulled the black man at the end of the line closer to Rose. The man struggled, and Rose winced as she saw the Dalek extend its plunger arm towards the man's face, sucking it in.

"In-telligence-scan-i-nitiate. Rea-ding-brain-waves. Low-intelligence."

The plunger withdrew, and the indignant man let out a "You calling me stupid?" that went ignored as the Dalek ordered him to be sent to become a pig slave.

The Dalek next moved onto Solomon, clearing him as having superior intelligence and calling for him to become part of the 'Final Experiment'. Then the Dalek arrived in front of Rose, and hovered back a metre the moment its eyestalk fell on her.

"A-lert! A-lert!"

Rose did a little wave. "Hello!"

"You-are-the-Abo-mina-tion!"

"And I'll have you know that's really not a nice thing to call a woman" Rose replied tartly as she prepared herself to dodge out of the way of an attack.

And sure enough, the Dalek went "Ex-ter-minate!"

Rose's rolling dive was for naught: the Dalek did not fire. Instead, it gritted out an "I-do-not-un-der-stand! This-is-the-A-bo-mi-na-tion, the-kil-ler-of-the-Emperor!"

"What did I just tell you?" Rose groused, getting back on her feet.

"I-obey" the Dalek let out in a clearly reluctant tone, before turning its attention back to Rose. "You-will-be-taken-with-the-pri-soners-to-the-trans-ge-nic-la-bo-ra-tory."

The young woman was baffled by that, but knew better than to protest the Daleks suddenly deciding to spare her. She fell back in line, and soon enough, the group started moving again, with only the Dalek missing part of its panels staying to escort them. And before long, the pack of captives had become enriched with three familiar individuals – Rose's two companions, and the woman with three L's and an H.

"I get that the two of you couldn't keep away, but why bring an innocent into this?" Rose muttered irritably as soon as she felt she could get away with it.

"Long story" Barbara muttered back, and when Rose glared at her, she added "Love story."

The younger woman had nothing to reply to that.

The column of prisoners made it to a vast chamber dug under New York City, nearly filled with human-sized pods and stinking pungently of chemicals. Another Dalek was standing vigilant next to one of its brethren, who had been connected to all kinds of strange machinery. Its shell was thrumming with energy, and tendrils of smoke escaped the trembling casing.

The Dalek who'd escorted them moved to the one waiting, who ordered its partner to report.

"I-have-brought-the-Abomi-nation-like-or-dered."

"Bring-her-for-ward" the intact Dalek ordered. Rose didn't wait for the pig men to push her. She walked forward, coming to a stop a short distance from the experimental setup.

"So, what is it you wanted to show me, Daleks?" she said with more confidence than she really felt.

"You-were-our-in-spira-tion. You-will-bear-wit-ness-to-the-dawn-of-a-new-age."

"What's going to happen, you're about to disappear in a shower of golden dust?" Rose ironized.

The Dalek connected to the machinery went silent, and its eyestalk's light went out. The casing opened, and a disgusting bipedal creature struggled out, wearing a disturbingly familiar suit. The humanoid had the single-eyed and stalk-surrounded head of a Dalek, and its hands were really clawed; it spoke in an accent Rose remembered as having been Mister Diagoras'.

"We have seen you transformed into the ultimate machine of destruction by the Doctor. Now that there are only four of us left, we must evolve."

The humanoid stood erect, its single eye fixed on a very pale Rose. "We will assimilate the greatest warlike species left standing in the universe. I am Dalek Sec, and I am the future. I am Human Dalek."

Rose felt disgust overtake her. "First the Master, then you. The more I see of Time Lords and Daleks, the better I understand why the Doctor felt he had to kill you all."

"And in that, too, you are our inspiration, Rose Tyler. No creature in this Universe hates so much they gave themselves the power to destroy an entire species."

It was wrong, and Rose knew it was wrong – she had done what she had out of love, not hatred, and she was about to say that, but stopped as she remembered she _did_ hate the Daleks and the Time Lords, and that as the Bad Wolf, she _was_ the ultimate machine of destruction.

And the notion she might have inspired the Daleks to become even more terrifying did not sit well with Rose Tyler.

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry, couldn't help myself with the crossover ^^

 **Jus Drein Jus Daun-Clexa** , Rose is indeed in for the long haul before she meets the Doctor again, which would happen early in a third series (I will get there, eventually x) ) The Hybrid being mentioned already is me cheating a bit – I've watched ten seasons of New Who, only three were laid down when the original season three aired… :p

 **ELinkA** , you're very welcome! Also love the Third Doctor. Him and the First Doctor are responsible for converting me to Peter Capaldi's Doctor ^^

 **BlueCandyMac** , by a stroke of good luck, I'm updating today ^^

See you all later!


	5. IV - Evolution of the Daleks

**A/N:** We-Da-leks-have-failed-to-own-the-Doc-tor!

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf**

 **IV. Evolution of the Daleks  
**

* * *

"So, what is it you wanted to show me, Daleks?" Rose said with more confidence than she really felt.

"You-were-our-in-spira-tion. You-will-bear-wit-ness-to-the-dawn-of-a-new-age."

"What's going to happen, you're about to disappear in a shower of golden dust?" Rose ironized.

The Dalek connected to the machinery went silent, and its eyestalk's light went out. The casing opened, and a disgusting bipedal creature struggled out, wearing a disturbingly familiar suit. The humanoid had the single-eyed and stalk-surrounded head of a Dalek, and its hands were really clawed; it spoke in an accent Rose remembered as having been Mister Diagoras'.

"We have seen you transformed into the ultimate machine of destruction by the Doctor. Now that there are only four of us left, we must evolve."

The humanoid stood erect, its single eye fixed on a very pale Rose. "We will assimilate the greatest warlike species left standing in the universe. I am Dalek Sec, and I am the future. I am Human Dalek."

Rose felt disgust overtake her. "First the Master, then you. The more I see of Time Lords and Daleks, the better I understand why the Doctor felt he had to kill you all."

"And in that, too, you are our inspiration, Rose Tyler. No creature in this Universe hates so much they gave themselves the power to destroy an entire species."

It was wrong, and Rose knew it was wrong – she had done what she had out of love, not hatred, and she was about to say that, but stopped as she remembered she _did_ hate the Daleks and the Time Lords, and that as the Bad Wolf, she _was_ the ultimate machine of destruction.

And the notion she might be worse than the Daleks themselves was definitely one that could terrify Rose Tyler.

…

… _tap-tap-tap-tap… tap-tap-tap-tap…_

… except there were far, far worse things which could happen in this universe, and through the Master's grafts, she realized she could remember the worst of them…

"The Final Sanction" Rose breathed.

"What is the Final Sanction?" Dalek Sec asked, and Rose looked at him, her eyes narrowing.

"Not something you can do" she said with a note of finality. "At least, you Daleks, you only wish to conquer everything and exterminate everyone that isn't a Dalek. You're not trying to put an end to reality itself."

"But you can?"

"The Time Lords could. That's why the Doctor had to kill them all." Behind her, in the prisoner rows, both Ian and Barbara stiffened.

"Did I just hear her-" Barbara started, only to be interrupted by a Dalek.

"You-two-are-al-so-known-to-the-Daleks! You-are-the-Hu-mans-who-stole-our-first-time-cap-sule!"

Barbara winced. "Of course, you had to remember that."

"Ex-ter-minate!"

"No!"

Rose had shouted, but she hadn't expected Dalek Sec to shout along with her. She stared at the hybrid creature, just as baffled as the Dalek who'd almost shot Barbara.

"These-are-com-pa-nions-of-the-Doc-tor! Kil-ling-them-will-hurt-him!"

"Your insights have already been proven flawed, Dalek Caan" the hybrid Dalek lectured. "You said it was the Doctor who would show up here and put our plan at risk, and clearly, the Doctor isn't coming."

"Sorry to disappoint" Rose chirped in, forcing herself to keep a light tone. "You're stuck with me. This is becoming a bit of a habit – except for the part where you're wearing a suit instead of a pepper pot. That part's new."

"Such insolence, such defiance…" the humanoid Dalek said with evident satisfaction. "Oh yes, we chose rightly when we decided to assimilate Humans. Such an innate disposition for hatred and war…"

Rose scoffed. "Enjoy it while it lasts. I've seen what happened the last time a Dalek assimilated human DNA. Didn't end so well for him."

"What happened?" the humanoid Dalek asked with genuine interest.

"Killed himself. He couldn't stand the conflict between his Human and Dalek parts. Now it's your turn, have fun with that."

"But this is excellent!" Dalek Sec replied with glee. "If I can withstand this inner conflict you're alluding to, learn to channel all this inner violence that is to come, imagine the new heights I might go!"

"You've changed already, you've developed the biggest ego I've ever seen in a Dalek" Rose said tartly, and the transformed Dalek chuckled.

"This, and soon, a great many other things." Dalek Sec turned to address the pig men. "Take the Abomination aside with her companions. They will serve as surety while I learn all I need from her."

"You tell yourself that it's going to work."

The humanoid Dalek did not reply. One of the pig men stepped out of the line and went to grab Rose by the arm; the young woman let herself led back to the file, and from there, back into the tunnels, a quintet of pig men marching the quintet of human men. Rose was busy assessing the possibilities to give their escort the slip, when one of the creatures signed and oinked and got its four cohorts to leave of their own accord, leaving him standing alone with Solomon, Ian, Barbara, Tallulah and Rose.

"You're a bit thick, aren't you?" the latter said the moment she was sure the other three pig men were out of earshot. She noticed the slap coming from the blonde just in time to dodge it. "Hey!"

"Laszlo is the smartest bloke I've ever been with!" Tallulah said furiously, making another attempt at reaching for Rose, who kept getting out of the way. The strange dance was interrupted by Ian's hearty laughter. His wife was also clearly amused.

"You brought this upon yourself, you know, Rose" Barbara said. "This is Laszlo. He got caught by the Daleks but managed to escape before they could finish transforming him into another of their servants."

"Oh." Rose looked at the pig man awkwardly. "Er, thank you?"

"We're wasting time" the pig man grunted in heavily accented English. "You need to get Tallulah to safety."

"At least you have your priorities in order" Rose mumbled. She took a step, and stopped dead in her tracks. "Oh." She pivoted, looking first at Laszlo, then at Tallulah, then back at Laszlo. "Oh. I'm so sorry."

The pig man ignored that. "Can you people find your way out of here?"

None of her companions acquiesced, and Rose spoke up again, her voice filled with sadness. "I've been changed too." Laszlo cocked his head at her, and she continued. "Long story. Just need to know I've got a perfect sense of direction. I'll get them out."

"Laszlo, why aren't you comin' with?" an anxious Tallulah asked.

The pig man shook his head. "I've been awake and running for far too long, I need a break, and you can't stay there." His human-looking eyes rested on Tallulah. "I love you."

He found himself with two armfuls of shaking blonde.

"I love you too, Laszlo. Come back to me."

"I promise."

Tallulah drew a breath, put her hands on either side of her lover's porcine face, and kissed him. Then she let go, returning to the other four, and nodded.

"Right" Rose said with forced cheer. "Let's go."

The small party began to walk away, and Rose spoke up again. "Right. We've got an hour or two, and we've got a problem."

"What happens in an hour or two?" Solomon asked.

"We've got two problems."

There was a groan from Barbara. "This is what I didn't miss from traveling with the Doctor, this need to be enigmatic all the time."

"I'm not trying to be enigmatic" Rose said. "I'm trying to figure out why the Daleks built their secret labs exactly underneath the Empire State Building."

"Those pepper pot thingies are buildin' the Empire State?" Tallulah blurted.

"Nah, they're only pulling the strings. And adding a bit here and there, like a longer lift or a bit of their plating, and I need to know why. That's the problem."

"And what's the next problem?" Solomon asked.

"We've got to evacuate Hooverville."

The man stopped dead in his tracks, quickly imitated by the rest.

"I can't evacuate Hooverville" Solomon said. "These people, they have nowhere else to go."

"Beats moving to a pine box."

"Rose!" Barbara said indignantly.

The young woman started to drum her fingers on her forearms. "Look, we've just escaped the last four Daleks in existence, Daleks from a crazy cult who don't want their plans to be revealed before they're ready to turn hundreds of people into hybrids of them, so their first priority's gonna be plugging the leak. In Dalek-speak, that means killing us and anybody who might have come in contact with us." She rounded up on Solomon. "That's why you've got to evacuate."

"And did it cross your mind that these creatures seem to be just as desperate as the people I'm watching over?" Solomon countered calmly.

Rose stared at the man; it was Ian who spoke up next.

"He's got a point, you know. These are the most rundown Daleks I've ever gotten to see, and I've seen them go quite low. Perhaps this is the one time there's a chance to get Daleks to back down. And even if they don't, there's only four of them, they can be beaten."

"He's right" Barbara reinforced. "Even I have taken down Daleks before, and I'm not much of a fighter."

Rose hid her face in her hands. "You guys are actually serious about this…"

"Why wouldn't we be?" said Ian.

"All I want here is to give peace a chance" Solomon added earnestly. "True, these creatures have made plans which are downright monstrous, wanting to turn hundreds of us into hundreds of them, but they have been reduced to that because they are afraid."

Rose looked at him, nervously drumming her fingers together and biting on her lips.

Then she relented. "Alright" she said. "One Dalek. One chance. But you're letting me take charge of things the moment it goes wrong, and our friends here are going to check on something while you do your talking."

"You aren't going to just trust the Daleks, are you?" Ian said with a small smile, and Rose grinned back at him.

"Oh, you're going to like this backup plan. I need you to get inside the Empire State."

Ian's face lit up, and Barbara groaned. "I'm going to be the one doing the actual work there, aren't I?"

"You know how men get" Rose replied playfully, searching through her pockets. She fished out a black leather card holder and tossed it over to Barbara, who nearly fumbled the catch.

"A little bit of warning, please?"

Rose ignored that comment. "You're going to need this with you. Psychic paper, you can get anybody stupider than Shakespeare to see exactly what you want them to see written on it."

Barbara opened the card holder curiously. Then she looked up at Rose. "That's a ticket for a cruise on the Titanic" she said tartly, tossing the object back at its owner.

"Really?" Rose gave it a cursory glance. "Huh. Cruise on the space Titanic, actually. I might check that out." She pocketed the invite, rummaged a bit in her pockets again.

"How much stuff do you have in these?" Ian curiously.

"No idea" Rose replied distractedly. "One thing I'll tell you, though, next time you might consider complaining about just how much a woman keeps in her handbag, think again – we've got nothing on the Doctor in that department. Ah!" The young woman quickly checked the next card holder she brought out. "That's the right one" she said, and this time Barbara snatched it out of the air deftly, and held it out to Solomon.

"What does it read?" Barbara asked, and the man squinted and leaned a bit forward, then straightened again.

"Ian in the Empire State Building is like a kid in a candy factory" Solomon said with bemusement, and he turned back to Rose. "You really are quite extraordinary."

"Got nothing on the Doctor in that department either" Rose replied matter-of-factly. "Alright, let's do this?"

"Where do I go?" Tallulah chirped in. Rose made to answer, but Barbara cut her.

"You're coming with us. I'll need all the help I can get to handle my husband."

Ian put on a mock-offended air. He didn't really fool anybody.

* * *

Rose and Solomon made it back to Hooverville, and the man quickly organized his people in preparation for the incursion. There was just one problem: it wasn't a Dalek who showed up first, but enough pig men to form a cordon around the ramshackle town and start pushing in. It was quickly apparent attempts to talk them down was pointless – the porcine faces responded with snarls and vicious oinking and just pressed on, forcing the shantytown's inhabitants to fight back in what Rose could only describe as a disorganized mess. The only advantage the defenders of Hooverville held was that the pig men's orders were clearly to capture, while their human opponents weren't quite holding themselves to the same restraints. Knives and batters came out to play, and a few gunshots rang, making Rose wince as she turned to the leader of the men, with whom she was standing, just outside of the fray.

"You don't actually think this is going to work, do you?" she said, biting her lips.

"I think it will" Solomon replied grimly. "There aren't quite as many of these poor creatures as I thought there might be, and after them there's only three of the metal Daleks and that one hybrid left – and if a woman can take one of them in a fight, they're not going to be a match for all of us."

Rose shook her head. "I paid attention to what Ian and Barbara said. The Daleks have changed a lot since their time."

"Their time can't have been long before yours" Solomon objected, "your Chesterton's don't even look old enough to be your parents."

"That's not really something we've got the leisure of talking about at the mo'" and Rose pointed out overhead. "Here comes the first one."

"Like a metal devil in the sky" Solomon said bemusedly as he watched the levitating Dalek.

"There's still time to tell your people to run away" Rose said, but the man shook his head.

"I said I was going to talk to them, and so I will" Solomon said gravely, and he stepped forward, placing himself where the creature's eyestalk could easily spot him. "I'm told I'm addressing the Daleks" the man said loud and clear.

"Cor-rect."

"We have a lot in common, you and us. I know you are outcasts, just like we are." The Dalek lowered itself a bit, eyestalk fixed on Solomon, who went on with more confidence. "Look at all of us. We're refugees, with no place made for us in any world and little lawful recourse if we wish to stay alive. Sometimes we're forced to commit some horrible deeds, but that's because we've got to survive."

Solomon stepped towards the Dalek, which lowered itself to ground level. "A wise woman I know just reminded us today comrades in misfortune should do what it takes to stay alive, but they should never turn on one another, and that's what we are: comrades in misfortune. We don't look the same, you and us, but underneath it all, what really matters is we truly are the same. We truly have no reason to fight one another. We truly have every reason to be working together."

The man was almost within reach of the Dalek now, and he took the last remaining steps forward confidently. "Even in our terrors we are the same. I've learned today that God's universe is a thousand times the size I thought it was, and that scares me. You are a handful of aliens and all that's left of your race living on a foreign world, and that scares you. But if we can move past our fears, if we can look beyond the past, if we can manage to find compassion for our fellow refugee in our hearts, we can make a better world for all of us."

Solomon took a final step, and extended his empty, open hand in the direction of the Dalek's plunger. "What say you?"

The Dalek stood silent and still for an instant, but Rose didn't need to look at Solomon's possible timelines to foresee what would happen next.

"Ex-ter-minate."

The familiar report of a Dalek's main weapon rent the night, and Solomon's body, extended hand and all, shone up briefly as his life was extinguished in front of the men and women he had protected, and might have succeeded to keep protecting if it had been anything other than a Dalek he'd tried to offer peace to.

But it had been a Dalek, and now the nightmarish creature turned and took aim at another living person, standing stunned by the shock of what had just happened; another human being that, to the Dalek, was nothing but the next highest priority item on its target.

"Ex-ter-minate!"

"NO!" Rose shouted, and she ran forward to plant herself in front of the Dalek, gilded eyes shining with fury. "Which one are you? Are you Jast? Or Thay? Or Caan?"

The Dalek refocused its attention on Rose, ignoring the rest of the crowd who began to ran away in terror. "You-are-the-companion-of-the-Doctor."

"One of many, yes."

"None-of-the-others-are-the-woman-he-loves."

Rose swallowed. "I know that. And I'm offering you that. Let the rest of them go – they don't want to fight anymore. Let them live, and take me."

The Dalek's eyestalk tilted. "You-will-not-be-ex-ter-mina-ted. You-have-a-pur-pose-in-the-fu-ture."

The young woman groaned in frustration. "Great. The one time I'm offering a Dalek to kill me, and you don't want to."

"In-cor-rect. The-urge-to-kill-you-is-strong."

"Then what purpose do I have in the future?"

"We-will-find-together" the Dalek answered, and it nudged Rose with its plunger. "You-will-come-with-me."

"Great. I hadn't even gotten around to getting rid of the sewers' smell."

* * *

Rose made a couple of attempts at getting the Dalek to elaborate on what it thought her purpose might be in the future, but to little avail. At least the trip back to the laboratories buried beneath the Empire State Building allowed her to confirm the Dalek accompanying her was the one named Caan, whom his fellows had said was gifted with prophetic insights, even inaccurate. And Rose had to admit she was curious about why a Dalek might feel compelled to ignore its urge to kill her – to a point, and certainly not enough to quell her ire.

"It's always the same with you Daleks, isn't it?" she yelled at Dalek Sec as soon as the hybrid creature was within earshot, and she continued to rant at it as she approached. "You just have to kill, again and again and again, because in the end, human crossbreed or pure, the only thing a Dalek thinks is right is murdering everything that isn't them!"

"The deaths were wrong."

It was the last response Rose would have expected from the hybrid Dalek. "What?"

"That man, their leader, Solomon" Dalek Sec went on. "He showed courage."

Rose flashed the hybrid Dalek a suspicious look. "And you're trying to tell me it mattered in some way?"

"It is a quality that did not need to exist in Daleks. But I am no longer truly Dalek. I am a new kind of being, with infinite possibilities, just like you are."

"I'm surprised your three fellows let you think that."

"I am their leader" Dalek Sec said sternly. "They will obey me."

"They don't need courage to start disobeying you, only to decide you're no longer a proper Dalek."

"There will be no more proper Daleks born. All our attempts at birthing them have ended in failure. The Daleks will only survive and prosper if we transform."

The hybrid creature turned away from Rose and walked over to one of the black human-sized pods lining the cavernous hall, and beckoned at her with one of its claw-like appendages. The young woman went to stand by the pod, feeling a little queasy.

"The size is no accident" she ventured. "There's a human being in there."

"You are correct" the Dalek said, pressing a button. The opaque surface on the upper side of the pod turned transparent, revealing the sleeping face of a thin, aging man with thick eyebrows poking from underneath a hoodie. "Observe the true extent of the final experiment." The hybrid Dalek made an ample gesture, embracing the hundreds of similar, interconnected contraptions filling the laboratory space. "All these people are near deaths, their minds wiped, ready to be filled with new ideas."

"Not just ideas, but also Dalek genes" Rose replied grimly. "This man, all these people… They're not coming back, are they?"

"Everything they were has been lost."

Rose glared at the hybrid creature. "Yeah, you're really just as bad as the Time Lords." She looked around the laboratory. "Still, splicing and converting this many people at once, that's going to take a lot of energy. There's not that much juice in four Daleks' batteries. How are you even going to manage?"

"The humans will provide" the hybrid Dalek stated. "Everything is in place. The experiment will begin soon."

* * *

"The experiment will begin soon, Inspector Chesterton" a balding, moustachioed, haughty-looking man echoed in the lobby of the Empire State Building. "I almost envy the nobodies walking the streets tonight – they will be getting quite the show."

Ian smiled back politely. "I am sure they will, Mister Lamb. In the meantime, I would appreciate a look at the sets of plans your construction workers are currently using."

"It will be my pleasure to show you" the man replied with a thin smile and a proud look. "But I doubt this will be of much interest to your wife or her friend."

"I would rather stay here in the lobby" Barbara replied, returning an equally haughty air. "I find the technicalities my husband enjoys wasting his sleep on rather trite and boring. Come, Tallulah." Barbara swept away, and Ian had to refrain from smiling – Mister Lamb had just provided his wife with an excellent excuse to stay where she could monitor any unwanted arrivals.

"Yours must be quite the interesting marriage, Inspector" the man said, not bothering to disguise his sneer.

"It has its moments" Ian replied levelly. "Lead the way."

The head architect of the project took Ian to temporary office spaces on the second floor. "We're too short on time to check the detailed schematics for the upper floors and mast" the man said, and Ian made a small hand wave.

"As long as you have updated plans here, I think it should do. Let's see them."

The architect had stopped in front of a series of rolled-up plans, a grimace on his face. "In a moment. Who mishandled those?" The man reached for one of the rolls and went to spread it on a wide table.

"Which set are those?"

"Electricity distribution, obviously, Inspector" the man scoffed, finishing his unrolling and flattening one such plan. Then his pate went red. "What is this joke?" he growled. "Who felt authorised to add in such an absurdity?"

Ian came over to the man's side, humming as if he understood what he was looking at. "Yes, that does look like something I would be interested in."

"It's nothing but a stupid, childish prank" Mister Lamb growled back, glaring at the 'inspector'. "Even you government types would know better than to reroute all of the building's main power supply towards waste water disposal pipes."

"The very same power supply lines you're about to illuminate the building with? That would be quite inconvenient."

"It's not anything you need to bother with, Inspector" the man said icily. "The whole notion is so stupid no proper construction worker would ever dream of actually going along with it."

"All the same, I'd like to take a peek at some of those connexions which aren't supposed to exist" Ian replied with a frown. "Just to make sure."

"We _are_ sure, Inspector, building those would have been sheer idiocy."

"Or sabotage" Ian pointed out.

His interlocutor blanched, then reddened again. "Surely they didn't-"

"We need to make sure. You need to stop the powering experiment."

"I don't give that order" the architect replied bluntly. "You don't give that order. And good luck getting in Al Smith's way when he's set on showing one up on FDR – he's not going to stop this show."

"The governor of New York might" Ian stated calmly. "He's here tonight, isn't he?"

The architect sneered. "For someone in your position, you really don't understand politics, Inspector. No, Al Smith will toggle that switch. And if someone did redo the power grid, he's going to look like a fool when all the power is rerouted to mass and nothing happens – sabotage indeed. I'm not getting in the way, and if you've got two ounces of sense neither will you."

Ian gave him a thin smile. "Well, like you noticed about my marriage, I like things which make my life interesting." He started on his way out, and halted at the office's door. "Oh, and I'd get rid of these altered plans if I were you, Mister Lamb. You know politics – when something the boss wants backfires and humiliates him, it always ends with them finding a pretext for one of his underlings to take the fall."

Ian walked away, leaving an indignant architect spluttering behind him. He made his way back to the lobby, and quickly located his wife, but not the third member of their trio. When she spotted him, Barbara quickly excused herself from her current conversation and approached, a look of concern on her face.

"This could be one of the worst possible times for the Daleks to make an appearance" she said quietly after reaching him. "All sorts of important historical figures are here tonight, including FDR."

"Yes, I've been told" Ian replied. "I know part of the Daleks' plan, they're going to reroute all the power used to illuminate the Empire State, and probably quite a bit more than that. They connected this building to their laboratories."

"They're plugged into New York's power grid" Barbara said grimly. "And who knows what they'll do after that?"

"Nothing good." Ian frowned a bit. "Where's our friend?"

"Busy being the life of the party – she hit it off with New York City's mayor, of all people."

"That might come in handy."

Barbara shook her head. "Not sure we'll find them for a bit, they'd want to stay away from journalists."

"Why?"

"It's the Prohibition, Ian. People aren't supposed to drink alcohol in public."

"Oh."

"Your attention, ladies and gentlemen, please?" The upraised voice was close enough to be heard, and the sound of voices fell all around the lobby, giving way to an excited silence. Ian and Barbara exchanged tense looks, and both fell back into the familiar pattern of getting ready for hell breaking loose around the Doctor. It didn't take words for them to decide to edge around the crowd and get close to FDR either, but by the time they got close to the man in a wheelchair, nothing too terrible happened, not even Al Smith's dramatic toggle of a switch making him look like an idiot.

In fairness to Al Smith, few people in the district could see how people near them looked. When he pressed his switch, the whole of New York City blacked out.

* * *

Beneath the Empire State Building, the immense amount of energy channelled into the laboratory brought the entire place to life, with streaks of life ominously sparking along the cables linking all the machinery while Dalek Sec rejoiced.

"Observe, Rose Tyler" he said with evident glee. "I have modified the depth of the slicing so as to conserve more of the human characteristics. It is time for the new master species to arise: the Dalek Humans."

THWAAAP!

Rose jumped at the all too familiar sound of a Dalek's ray firing, but she hadn't been the target. Dalek Sec had been, and the twisted form of his skeleton shone briefly as he was killed by one of the last three pure Daleks in all of creation.

"No!"

The young woman ran. She barely reached the hybrid in time to catch its crumpling form, and the weight of it caused her to stumble and land on her knees, cradling the creature's head. She looked up and glared at the Dalek who had just shot.

"So this is what I didn't get to witness that time in Utah" she said, voice shaking with anger. "Even if it hadn't ended its own existence, that Dalek I changed accidentally was dead the moment my DNA got mixed in. Because you guys can't stand anything that isn't pure Dalek, can you?"

"In-cor-rect!" the Dalek who had shot replied. "We-will-pro-ceed-with-the-Fi-nal-Ex-per-riment! The-new-ser-vants-will-be-hu-mans-with-the-mind-of-a-Da-lek!"

"So you've reversed what Dalek Sec has done" Rose deduced. She lay down the hybrid creature on the floor and stood up as the machinery ground to a halt. The pods opened, and in near-unison, their occupants' hands rose to grab the rims of their own unit, sat up, and extracted themselves to stand at attention. But the most horrifying part to Rose was how they had all kept their human traits.

"Arm-your-selves!"

In near-unison again, the hundreds of human-shaped hybrids reached into their pods and retrieved what could only be the main armament of Daleks.

"Oh, I see where this is going" Rose said, her voice shaking. "You've got a brand new army; you're going to invade New York to begin with, create even more of your hybrids, and from there you'll springboard to take over the rest of Earth."

"Cor-rect" the new leader of the Daleks confirmed. "Earth-will-be-come-New-Ska-ro!"

"Probably the one destination in the entire universe I don't fancy visiting" Rose replied, her voice regaining in strength. "I might have to anyway, if only to ensure you don't just keep returning and returning. But that's for another day…"

"There-will-be-no-o-ther-day."

Rose let her gaze wander around, taking in the blank faces of the humans modified by the Daleks. Her eyes lingered for an instant on the first face she saw, that of the older man – the only older man in the batch, really, standing out for that reason, but why he'd been selected and no others of his age, the young woman had no idea, nor any time to try and understand why the discrepancy. There was a bigger concern to address, and Rose voiced it.

"So here we are. Three Daleks, maybe a thousand of their servants, and me, having to stop you all before you cause an irreparable tear in the fabric of time, and between you and me, I have absolutely no idea how to do it – but I have to do it anyway, because I can't ever inspire you to do this all if the Earth becomes a Dalek planet before I'm even born, can I?"

"Time-will-heal-from-the-para-dox" the leading Dalek answered. "You-are-an-abo-mi-nation. Time-will-seek-to-des-troy-you-to-fix-it-self."

"I'm pretty certain you're the one getting this one wrong" Rose said, turning to the Dalek who had brought her back to the laboratories. "You're the prophet among them, right? Dalek Caan? Tell them what you saw about me."

"It-does-not-mat-ter!" the leading Dalek cut her off. "You-will-be-exter-mina-ted! Da-lek hu-mans, at arms!"

In unison, the human-faced Daleks shouldered their weapons.

"Take-aim!"

Hundreds of weapons turned towards one single target, Rose, and that was far too many weapons to hope she'd avoid being hit, and far beyond what she knew she could manage by tapping into the Time Vortex by herself. She was beaten. There was nothing the young woman could do but close her eyes and whisper one desperate word, the only hope she could think of.

"Doctor…"

"Ex-ter-minate!"

Rose's body tensed, expecting to die the next instant – but nothing happened. There was no screeching of death rays, not even missed shots, not even the click of a malfunctioning weapon. Instead, there was a single word, uttered by one of the Dalek Humans: "Why?"

"Da-leks-do-not-ques-tion-or-ders! Ex-ter-minate!"

"Why?" This time, a handful of voices had spoken.

There was a hint of panic now in the leading Dalek's voice. "Da-leks-do-not-ques-tion-or-ders!"

"Why?", fifty or sixty Dalek Humans asked.

"Well, I'm afraid that's my doing" a Scottish-accented voice rose from the ranks, and Rose spotted immediately who had just spoken – it was the older man with the hoodie and the thick eyebrows, and both eyebrows and accent were somehow familiar to her – but certainly not to the Daleks.

"Who-are-you?"

The man tossed aside his weapon. "Oh, you wouldn't know. And doesn't that infuriate you?"

"Da-lek-Hu-mans! Ex-ter-minate-him!"

"Why?"

The grey-haired man smiled. "Good question, I'm glad you asked." Then the smile gave way to a frown. "No, actually, terrible question, forget you asked, because there is never a good reason why you should do as the Daleks say."

"We-are-not-saying!" the leading Dalek screamed. "This-is-an-order! Da-lek-Hu-mans! Ex-ter-minate-them!"

But once again, the Dalek Humans did not comply. Instead, the one closest to the screaming Dalek lowered his weapon, and addressed his creator in a flat, unemotional tone. "We will not obey. We are not Dalek Humans."

"No, you're not" the aging man picked up, walking to the man who had spoken. "You are something new, something unique. Part-Human, part-Dalek, part-me, and I'm afraid I belong to neither of the other two species."

"You hacked into their machinery" Rose realized, barely paying attention to the Dalek hovering past her. "They tried to deliver pure Dalek genes to splice onto their hybrids, and you got into their system and ruined that."

"A-plus, Rose Tyler" the aging man said with a manic grin, and he turned back to the Daleks. "I have to say, for a species modified for superior perceptions and with access to near-infinite databanks, you're good at missing the obvious."

"This-does-not-matter! The-Da-lek-Hu-mans-will-be-ex-ter-mina-ted!"

The leading Dalek joined gesture to speech, shooting the leading dissenter among the Dalek Humans dead.

"No!" the aging man and Rose exclaimed themselves simultaneously, and a second Dalek opened fire – and all hell broke loose, as the Dalek Humans riposted and their shots hit not only the two nearest Daleks, but also quite a bit of the equipment in the laboratory, setting off multiple explosions and starting a number of fires.

Then a high-pitched noise came to dominate the rumble and the fire, and the Dalek Humans dropped their weapons, clamped their hands on their heads and broke into a cacophony of screams of pain. And then they dropped dead, and only Rose and the aging man were left standing.

And one Dalek.

Rose turned towards the creature, a raging fury mounting within her. "A whole species" she gritted out. "An entire, new, wonderful species with unknown potential, and you killed them all."

Behind her, the aging man started to approach, calling out the young woman's name. "Rose."

She pivoted again on her heels. "Don't you dare and stop me. This is the last Dalek in the whole universe. I have this one chance to stop all such genocides from ever occurring again at their hand." The man kept approaching, hands raised in a peaceful gesture, and Rose raised her voice. "You wouldn't understand. I can finally put an end to the Time War. I can finally make sure nobody has to die because of a Dalek – all I have to do is let loose the Wolf and the entire blasted species will be no more."

"And what will that turn you into?" the man said quietly, coming to a stop within reaching distance of Rose.

"What does it matter to you?" the young woman said hotly.

"When has it stopped mattering to you?"

Rose glared at the man, and her eyes caught his – and she noticed that even set in an aging man's face, the man's eyes looked impossibly old.

Then it clicked. She'd seen the man before, except he'd been wearing a butler's uniform, only a few years ago in linear time for her, but it might as well have been a lifetime.

"Bad Wolf lounge" she said hoarsely. "You let Donna in and asked me to stay behind, and you handed me over a bit of psychic paper."

"Did I?" the man said, quirking his voluminous eyebrows and giving her a faint smile. "I'll have to remember that."

"Who are you?" Rose demanded, anger seeping back into her voice. "Why are you trying to stop me?"

"Because you once stopped me from doing exactly what you're about to do right now."

"I would remember if I'd done anything this stupid" Rose said hotly.

"I think you can remember. It happened on a day we met one of your boyfriends, the one who went and got himself a door opening on his pudding brains."

"I've got nothing to do with-"

" _You're out_ " Rose's own voice echoed in her memories, cutting her off. " _You made it. I never thought I'd feel the sunlight again_."

Rose froze in place as she realized just what memory the aging man had brought up. She'd said those words in Utah, in 2012, and she had been talking to a Dalek who had absorbed her own DNA, before she took a stand between the lone Dalek, who may just have killed dozens of people back then but whose last desire had been a chance at feeling the sun on its skin, and the Doctor, her first Doctor, the man who wore the very same leather jacket Rose wore now, as desperate to shoot and kill what he then thought was the last Dalek in existence as Rose was now desperate to destroy the last Dalek she knew existed.

And she had stopped him, the man wearing the leather jacket, a man who had been in as much pain and anguish as she was feeling now. And the only way the aging man with the impossibly old eyes could bring up so accurately what had happened on that day in Utah was if he was the…

"Doctor" she breathed, and the aging man smiled fondly.

"Hello."

"Hi." Rose returned a faint smile, which grew wider and wider, until the young woman just pounced, hugging this aged version of the Doctor for all she was worth and burying her crying face in his chest – tears and a hug the Time Lord received extremely awkwardly, his own arms hanging in the air around the crying woman.

"I'm sorry Rose, I'm afraid not much of a hugging person in this body" the Time Lord said with a cringe.

"I don't care" the young woman said, sniffing loudly. "You're back. You're finally back."

"Rose-"

"Please don't, Doctor. Just let me enjoy this moment."

"There's still a Dalek pointing a gun at us."

"Oh."

The young woman disentangled herself from the Doctor, hastily wiped her tears on her sleeve, and took a tissue the aged version held out so she could blow her nose.

"Thank you, Doctor."

"It's a selfish gesture. I'll have you know I am rather fond of the hoodie" the Time Lord replied grumpily, and Rose snorted into the tissue.

"Still rude and not ginger."

"So-cial-inter-ac-tion-will-cease!" the surviving Dalek screeched, and the Doctor turned towards it.

"Thank you for the reminder, my partner here is a bit distracted and she does still need to make a decision about you."

These words burst into Rose's bubble, and reminded her of the reality of the present situation. "Right. One single Dalek remaining in the entire universe, capable of independent thought and who's just proven it can and will commit genocide if necessary."

"Are-you-going-to-exter-minate-me?"

"No" Rose said flatly. "The Doctor was right to remind me. I can't do this. Even if every single logical fact I know about Daleks supports going in that direction, I can't just kill you and end your entire species. But I think the TARDIS can hold you captive, Dalek Caan, so it is what is going to happen. You've got no other options left."

"There-is-ano-ther-op-tion" the Dalek ground out. "Emer-gency-temporal-shift!"

The Dalek disappeared in a stream of light, and Rose blinked twice, following with a groan.

"Great" she said dejectedly. "One Dalek roaming free in the entire universe. Just one. And I'm responsible for letting it go."

"Did you pay attention to that Dalek's timelines?" the Doctor queried, and Rose shook her head negatively. "Well, I have, and I can tell you this one Dalek has a very important part to play for the future of the entire universe."

Rose stared at him. She let out a strangled reply. "Why didn't you say that in the first place?"

"Because I didn't want you to make the right choice for the wrong reason."

Rose mulled on that, then she caught on to something else.

"Hold on, how do you know I can see timelines?"

The Doctor quirked his eyebrows. "Because I've met with you a few times before I actually met you and after you became what you are now, remember?"

"That's true…" Rose sniffed, and she blew her nose again, then took out her sonic screwdriver and burnt the used tissue, and the Doctor looked at her with surprise.

"Why did you just do that?"

"Do what?"

"Burn that tissue."

"I wasn't just going to drop my litter on the ground, was I?"

"We're in a sewer laboratory littered with hundreds of dead bodies."

"We're in a secret Dalek laboratory hidden beneath the sewers. Speaking of which", and Rose approached the machinery the Daleks had been working on earlier, "I really should be looking for a way to route the power the Daleks stole back to New York City."

The Doctor winced. "I should have thought about that."

"You've always tended to get distracted easily, no matter the body" Rose quipped, running her sonic over a console.

"Says the woman who forgot there was a Dalek standing twenty feet from her."

Rose groaned. "I'd just realized I'd finally found you again after four years away from you." She activated the sonic, and the console crackled briefly. "There. All set."

"Turned the power off?"

"And fried a bit of the machinery, just in case" Rose explained. She pocketed her screwdriver and walked back to her partner. "How long has it been for you?"

The Doctor's reply sounded pained. "Does it really matter?"

"I've been apart from you for longer than we have travelled together, and seeing as how you've regenerated again, odds are it's been the same for you." Rose gave the Doctor an intense look of her golden eyes, and she swallowed. "I need to know where we stand. And where we can go from there."

The Doctor gave her a long, sad look. Then sadness gave way to gentleness. "I love you" the Time Lord said quietly, smiling at her. "It doesn't matter how long I've had to wait until I got my chance to say it back."

Rose was completely caught by surprise by the admission. She stood still for a moment, a shocked expression on her face.

Then she managed a croak. "You love me?"

"I love you" the Doctor repeated.

Rose looked down at herself. "Even as I am?"

"It would be stupid of me to let a few changes in biological makeup make a difference."

For the second time in a few minutes, Rose went to hug the Doctor (and for the second time in a few minutes, the Doctor went awkwardly about hugging back). There were no tears this time, just a growing feeling of joy inside Rose, a feeling not even the constant drumming could mar.

"Rose-" the Doctor started, and the young woman cut him off.

"Yeah. I know. Not a hugger."

"I was going to point out there's still fires burning from the shoot-out earlier and this whole place is about to go ablaze."

Rose looked up at the Doctor's face from where she was nestled. "Is there going to be a risk anything bad spreads through the sewers?"

"No, this place is very much self-contained" the Doctor replied, bringing a little smirk on Rose's lips.

"Good. We both hate to deal with fallout."

"Yes, it's probably best we just head straight for the TARDIS" the Doctor said awkwardly. "And to do that we're going to have to stop hugging."

Rose giggled and disentangled herself from the Time Lord. "You really aren't much of a hugger this go around."

"Tell me about it" the Doctor mumbled.

"Bit more rude this go around too, by the sound of it" Rose said with glee, and the Doctor.

"Can we skip this part and go to the TARDIS?"

"I've got to get back to Ian and Barbara first."

The Doctor's face fell. "Tell me you didn't."

"Didn't do what?"

"I mean, I get that you were obligated to emulate me and play my part while I was trapped in another dimension, but don't you think picking up two companions because they have the same names as my own first companions is overdoing it?"

Rose let out a bark of genuine laughter. "They're _your_ Ian and Barbara, you silly Time Lord. Don't you remember meeting them while they were travelling with me when you were much younger?"

The Doctor cringed again. "Let's forget I ever said that and let's just go."

"Got just one more question before we do" Rose said more seriously. "I know you're not big on physical affection, but how about holding hands?"

The Doctor's face lit up with a grin. "Yes, I can certainly do that."

Rose grinned back at him, feeling exhilarated like she hadn't for the past four years, and she held out her hand for the Time Lord to take, which he did. It was a different hand, but now their respective body temperatures were closer, it felt more comfortable than ever.

And the young woman's happiness was clearly shared by the Doctor. "Rose Tyler" he said, smiling fondly, and she returned a tongue-touched grin.

"Doctor."

The next word, they spoke in unison.

"Run."

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N:** Couldn't… resist… temptation… ^^

 **Nyx Muirinn** , thanks! And sorry for the slow update pace, I'm still restricted to writing for 20 or 30 minutes stolen here and there x)

 **ELinkA** , you're very welcome. Thank _you_.

 **Jus Drein Jus Daun-Clexa** , you were entirely correct ^^ Thanks for the kind words.

Well, I suppose I'll be writing a bit of 12 x Rose in the future! Until then, my best to you all.


	6. V - 42

**A/N:** Being able to post so late without any contractual violations is a solid indicator none of this is mine… x) Funnily enough, I decided 42 would be getting back in not long before I learned Chris Chibnall would be taking the helm for Season 11. 42 was his first actual Doctor Who Episode, was it not?

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf**

 **V. 42**

* * *

The Doctor and Rose were still holding hands by the time they made it to the area where the participants in the ceremony crowned by the botched attempt at lighting up the Empire State Building had been regrouped as a safety precaution. The mood in the assemblage was a subtly acerbic one by this point – the power outage that had been attributed to the attempt at lighting the skyscraper was over, and the lights of the tower and its unfinished mast shone brightly over New York. The Doctor's psychic paper got the pair of time travellers through without any questions asked, and were met there by a relieved-looking Ian, who grinned at the young woman in the pair.

"You delivered again, Miss Wolf" he said happily, and then he looked at the aging man holding hands with her. "And I suppose you were involved in whatever madness went on with the Daleks?"

"You bet he was" Rose said with a tongue-touched grin. "He's the Doctor, he can't help getting involved."

Ian turned and looked at the Time Lord. "You are the Doctor?"

"It's a little complicated to explain-" the Doctor started to say, and Ian cut him off.

"I already know you regenerate into a different body when you die, Doctor. Although I'm a bit surprised at the fascination you seem to have with looking older and distinguished."

"I'm looking younger than you!" the Doctor protested loudly, and both Ian and Rose gave him long looks. "Seriously? Neither of you are able to see it?"

A double negative headshake.

"Well, I suppose that's the human need for self-validation speaking, so you just keep blinding yourselves that way" the Doctor said grumpily. "Although do me a favour and stop with the matching grins, you two look exactly like a pair of Englishmen mocking a Scotsman."

"Just enjoying you being yourself, Doctor" Ian said with evident mirth. "A touch of advice for when you meet the wife, though, don't tell her you look younger than her."

"I think I preferred the pair of you before domestics got involved" the Doctor groused, and Rose giggled, earning herself an irate look. "What?"

"It's just nice to see some things never change" Rose replied, grinning from ear to ear. "Speaking of Barbara, where is she?"

Ian's smile turned sour. "Back in the building. She and I tried to go looking for Tallulah when the power went out, but we got separated. They're still in, and this lot aren't willing to let anybody through until they get the clear." Ian nodded towards the police cordoning off the Empire State.

"Well, I don't see why that would be a problem" the Doctor said with a frown. "Come with me, you two, let's get this sorted out."

The Time Lord took off towards the police cordon, Rose and Ian following after a couple of seconds.

"He keeps getting grumpier with every change, doesn't he?" the man said conversationally, and Rose laughed.

"Oh, you should have seen the second version of him I travelled with. That one's version of grumpy was as threatening as a frowning puppy."

"So he does break away from cantankerous and old every now and then."

"Yep. Like I told you once, only constants with the Doctor are he's rude and he's not ginger."

The trio had reached the cordon, and the Doctor was flashing out his psychic paper at a burly policeman. "FBI, supervisor John Smith." He gestured towards the other two. "These are my-"

"-technical experts" Rose cut him off, gesturing at Ian, who got out the psychic paper the woman had lent him and presented it. "Doctor Wolf, and-"

"I know the inspector" the policeman said grumpily. "You're persistent, I'll give you that. But her?" and the man pointed at Rose, "she doesn't look like a Doctor. She doesn't even look like a proper woman. And she stinks of sewer – no offense, Sir."

The man earned himself a flat look and a rapid-fire response from the young woman. "The product of its pressure by the specific volume of a perfect gas is equal to the product of its matter quantity in mol times its temperature in Kelvin times Avogadro's number times Boltzmann's constant."

"What?"

"See?" the Doctor said smugly. "Fully qualified doctor, with two specialties in thermodynamics and electricity, barely anybody understands her scientific babble once she gets going. Perfect woman for the job, even if she _is_ a complete eccentric."

"You're one to talk, Supervisor Smith" Rose shot at him before rounding on the increasingly shocked policeman. "As to you, I'll have you know the stink comes from investigating the mess whichever genius made of this building's power network and putting a stop to it, which, by the way, I obviously managed, seeing as how you don't need a torchlight to look at my socially inappropriate but practically very useful getup."

The now-gobsmacked agent turned back to the 'supervisor'. "And you let her backtalk to you like that?"

"Count yourself lucky you've never met Clara" the Doctor grumbled, "she makes Rose look tame by comparison."

"Clara Who?" Rose asked.

"It's really not important right now" the Doctor replied uncomfortably, "we've got to finish our job and it's not going to happen if we keep on nattering here. Now would you kindly let us pass?" he added more confidently, for the policeman.

"Of course, Sir" the man replied, stepping aside and signalling his colleagues to let the trio through.

Rose was quite proud of managing to hold her tongue until the trio had cleared the lobby. She still got beat to the punch by the Doctor.

"You couldn't have chosen something more complicated?"

"Started from zero A-levels and studied on and off for three years, remember?"

"Well you've certainly got a long way to go at this point."

Rose glared at him. "Charming. Also, Clara Who?"

"Traveling companion of mine" the Doctor said, pausing in his stride and turning to Ian. "Where was Barbara supposed to be last?"

"Upper levels" Ian supplied, "that's where Tallulah was supposed to be sneaking in a drink with the mayor of New York."

Rose stayed her course. "Traveling companion?"

It was Barbara who saved him, running down a stairwell and coming to a halt, short-of-breath and a bit dishevelled. "Thank goodness you're here, Rose. You need to come."

Rose gave the Doctor a brief look to signify their conversation wasn't over, and turned her attention to Barbara. "What happened?"

"It's Laszlo. He's here, he found Tallulah. And he's dying."

Rose nodded briefly at Barbara, who led the way, the trio in tow. They climbed a couple of floors and went to a still-empty office area, finding a distraught Tallulah sitting on the floor and supporting a rapid, shallow-breathing Laszlo's head onto her lap.

"It's them goddamn Daleks" the blonde woman said, looking desperately at Rose. "Whatever they did to him, it's killin' him."

Rose barely had time to open her mouth that the Doctor was on the move, swooping down on the dying hybrid and drawing a green-themed sonic screwdriver which was considerably larger than Rose's.

"Oi, back off!" Tallulah shouted.

"It's alright" Rose said reassuringly. "He's the Doctor. He's way better than I am at that sort of thing."

"He's the Doctor?" Barbara said with surprise, almost echoed by Tallulah's "Who's the Doctor?"

"The most insufferably brilliant man you'll ever meet, with a planet-sized ego to boot" Rose answered.

"Yes, thanks for the heartfelt praise" the Doctor grumbled. Rose ignored him and went on.

"He's also the one person in the whole universe who has the best chance at saving your man. Let him try, Tallulah."

The distraught woman looked up at Rose, and then at Barbara, who nodded and let out a "If he's really the Doctor, you can trust him."

"He is the Doctor" Ian corroborated.

Tallulah's eyes returned to the Doctor. She swallowed, and nodded, and the Time Lord snapped into action, running his sonic screwdriver all along Laszlo's body.

"They did a very crude job of it" the Time Lord grumbled, "no wonder this chap is fading. Really, this form of splicing into accelerated evolution is-"

"Can you do something?" Rose cut in.

The Doctor nodded. "I suppose you'll have the TARDIS somewhere nearby."

Rose cringed. "Right, the old girl stayed with me. I hope she'll let us back in, she was a bit temperamental when we got here."

The Doctor turned his head around and grinned. "That's okay, all you have to do is make a psychic link with her door."

"He's definitely the Doctor" Barbara commented.

"He's also daft" Rose said tartly. "It's not the door you can form a psychic link with, it's the TARDIS. You can't form a psychic link with a door."

"That makes sense."

"It's wrong, it's just beyond the ability of most people for a fairly obvious reason, Barbara" the Doctor cut in. "Doors are notoriously close."

"Unlike someone's policies with regards to time traveling companions, which seems to be open door" Rose said, pointedly looking at the Doctor. "Clara who?"

"Clara Oswald" the Doctor answered unhelpfully. "Ian, come over here and help me, let's get the Man-Beast back to the TARDIS as comfortably as we can."

"Man-Beast?" said a shocked Tallulah.

"I make a point never to memorize names, Local Dancer, already got far too much that's more important to remember."

Rose shot him a glare and turned to the blonde woman. "Don't worry, this version is pushing it a bit on the rude side, but if he knows how to get Laszlo better, he will."

* * *

To Tallulah's disappointment, the Doctor didn't quite reverse what had been done to Laszlo, but he did stabilize the pig man's health so he and Tallulah got to spend their lives together, and with questionable advice to avoid answering any military drafts, the Doctor sent them off the TARDIS, with Ian and Barbara accompanying the couple back to Hooverville. Which left Rose and the Doctor alone in the TARDIS' console room, the former full of questions but not sure where to begin, and the latter nostalgically studying the various instruments. It was the Doctor who spoke first.

"You didn't change anything after I left" he said wistfully.

"You changed a thing or two" Rose replied uncomfortably.

The Time Lord smiled. "New new new new Doctor."

Rose's face fell. "I missed a whole regeneration."

"Oh, you never know when you might run into him" the Doctor said off-handedly. "After all, you seem to have been quite good at meeting with earlier versions of me."

A glint in the young woman's eye. "How many regenerations of you have met me?"

The Doctor made a face. "You know better than to ask that question. It's far too risky to say before it's also happened for you."

The glint turned into an angry look. "Is that the reason why you're not telling me how long it's been for you or won't answer questions when I ask about this Clara of yours?" Rose said with hurt in her voice. "Do I get to meet this earlier regeneration of yours, only to get brushed off once again like you once did to Sarah Jane?"

It was the Doctor's turn to take on a pained expression. "I never leave you behind by choice" he said quietly, and Rose snorted.

"That's a change from sending me straight to a parallel universe."

"I knew something was going to happen that day and I tried to protect you from it" the Doctor replied, looking away from the irate young woman and fiddling with one of the screens around the central column. " _You_ knew something was going to happen that day" he added, "you left a warning for yourself, and that version of you had to know I would understand what reading it meant."

"You were sending me away forever" Rose said accusingly, and the Doctor looked up at her, his own eyes hard, his eyebrows bristling.

"And for years and years I wished you had stayed" he said sharply, catching the young woman off guard. "For years and years, I was trapped behind the walls of a parallel world, with my only chance of coming back linked to some catastrophic event threatening both universes, knowing that you were left on your own, having to face dangers even I want to run away from on an everyday basis because that's what we did when we were together and hell would have frozen over before you'd stop." Rose tried to say something, but the Doctor steamed ahead. "And guess what: I'm back in this universe, which means that catastrophic event did happen, but for you it did not happen yet, and in case the monkey part of your brain did not process what _that_ means, it means-"

"Doctor, will you just _stop it?_ " Rose shouted.

The pair of them stood there, both breathing heavily, the young woman's eyes glistening, her right hand drumming on her leg. She was the one who broke the silence, her voice laced with bitterness.

"Well, at least I know this version of you will still insult other species under stress."

The Time Lord shrugged. "It's a good habit."

The Doctor stepped away from the console, walking to the far end of the console room, eyes wandering aimlessly on its coral walls. Rose, for her part, walked backwards until she could lean on the railings circling part of the console room, and she proceeded to drum on them.

"That catastrophic event you mentioned, it's absolutely going to happen in my future" she said without enthusiasm.

"I can't tell you. Time's still in flux around you."

Rose mulled over that answer for a bit. "This isn't the first time for you that we've met since Canary Wharf."

The Doctor stooped a little. "I can't tell you that either" he said wearily.

"And now you're going to have to go back even further in my timeline and give me psychic paper."

The Doctor turned around, and Rose could see that he was frowning. "You've already mentioned that – and yes, I'm going to have to. I have to preserve that timeline."

Rose looked down at her feet, and for a moment the only sound either of the two made was her fingers drumming on the railings.

"It happens on Christmas Eve in 2007 sometime after nightfall" she said eventually. "Bad Wolf lounge, at the Orangery in the Kensington Abbey grounds in London." She let out a small snort. "Earth, obviously."

"I'd kind-of figured out that last one" the Doctor said with a frown. "What do I need to look like?"

Rose looked back up. "You play the part of a butler. You hand me a small envelope with the psychic paper inside when I arrive with Donna, the whole thing was supposed to be her wedding reception – you know who Donna is, don't you?"

"I do." The Doctor's frown intensified. "Do I tell you who I am?"

Rose smiled bitterly. "You don't. And you should stop doing the thing with the eyebrows, it's not going to intimidate me."

The Doctor returned her a humourless smile. "You wouldn't happen to know who frowned me this face, would you?"

"I've only seen this face once before, and it was on you." The young woman sighed. "And now you're going to have to leave and head back to Donna's wedding reception, and I'll have no idea how much longer I need to go on my own."

The Doctor looked away from her, and there was no mistaking the pain in his voice. "If there was any way I could safely tell you what's going to happen in your future, I would."

Rose pushed herself off the railings and walked towards the Doctor. The Time Lord cringed away when the young woman held out her arms, but she caught hold of him and hugged him tightly to her, burying her head inside his sweater.

"Rose…"

"Shut up, Doctor" came the muffled answer.

"You know I'm really not good at doing either of those things" the Time Lord answered uncomfortably. Then he noticed how the young woman was shaking with silent sobs, and he held her awkwardly. "I suppose I could give it a try just this once."

* * *

The Doctor was alone in the console room, his attention focused on the instrumentation, when Ian and Barbara made their way back inside the TARDIS, and he barely had time to turn and notice them that Barbara was already talking.

"Where is Rose?"

"She needs a bit of time" the Doctor said without looking up.

This earned him a glare from his old companion. "What did you do?"

This time the Doctor looked up, frowning at Barbara. "I went where she told me I needed to go" he said bluntly. "And now I know I'm not done running errands for her either."

The Time Lord returned his attention to the instrumentation. He flipped a couple of switches and pulled a lever, and the familiar whirring from the time rotor made itself heard.

"So, where are we going then, Doctor?" Ian asked with circumspection, and the Time Lord sighed.

"I'm taking you home. I've got to do what Rose said I've done in her past, and neither of you were around when I did it."

"We could just wait on the TARDIS until you're done" Ian objected, and the Doctor shook his head.

"I told you, she needs to spend a bit of time on her own."

"What for?" Barbara said sharply.

"To mourn for the life she can't know when she can have" the Doctor replied in the same tone. Then his voice quieted down, and a haunted look appeared on his face. "Trust me, there's nothing I wish more than staying here and never letting Rose go for the next couple thousand years rather than do whatever little things needed to preserve our timelines and leave her behind again, but that's exactly what I'm going to have to do."

Barbara glared at him. "And what if she wants you to stay? Are you just going to drop her off and fly away with the TARDIS, leaving her stuck behind to cope with everything she's been through while you weren't around?"

"Barbara-" Ian tried hesitantly, but his wife cut him off.

"No, Ian. You've seen what she's like. Rose didn't tell, but going by her hair, it's been at least six months since we first saw her, possibly a fair bit longer, and she still clams up at the first mention of the Master – that's how badly she's traumatized. Rose needs _help_ , Doctor. Either you stay with her, or you leave us with her."

The Doctor sighed. "Barbara, I've already told you that-"

" _And_ you're leaving the TARDIS with her if you're not staying" Barbara forged on.

"Of course I'm leaving the TARDIS with Rose, it belongs in her timeline" the Doctor grumbled. "I've just told you my first concern right now is preserving the timelines."

"Your first concern should be Rose."

"No, it shouldn't." Rose's voice had sounded cold, and the only sign she wasn't alright was the tapping of her fingers on her own crossed forearms as she walked into the room.

"Rose…" Barbara said, but a stern look from the gilded eyes stopped her, and the young woman in the leather jacket stepped towards the TARDIS' console. She began to input commands.

"How did you get here, Doctor?" Rose asked without looking up.

"Vortex manipulator. Borrowed it from Jack. Cost me quite the lecture. He's not too happy with me at the moment."

"Something to do with your mysterious Clara?" Rose asked sharply as she pushed a series of levers.

The Doctor shook his head. "I don't think she will travel with me again." He was looking at Rose as she worked the TARDIS' controls. "Where are we going?"

Rose pulled a final lever, and the TARDIS came to life. The young woman looked away from the console, and addressed Ian and Barbara. "The pair of you fancy a bit of Christmas shopping?"

"We left in April" Barbara remarked. "What's that red thing flashing on the screen over there?"

The Doctor got to the screen faster than Rose, and he let out an annoyed groan. "Humans! When will they ever learn to use the proper colour scheme for things?"

A thin smile played on Rose's lips. "So this would be a non-mauve distress signal." She stopped at the Doctor's side and craned her neck at the screen. "Yep. Stranded spaceship."

The pair exchanged a look, and then both of them burst into activity.

"Let me guess" Ian said from behind them, "Christmas is cancelled."

"No, Christmas is delayed" Rose answered.

"What happened to the first priority being preserving the timelines?"

"I'm pretty sure we can handle any kind of engineering issue and its causes between Rose and me" the Doctor replied confidently, and the TARDIS shook violently, forcing both Ian and Barbara to hang onto the railings.

"Hold on" Barbara said shakenly when the tremors stopped. "You two don't have the time to talk together, but you've got time to answer distress calls."

"Long story, too busy!" Rose shouted back, and she pushed a final lever, bringing the TARDIS to a sudden halt which almost sent her flying. She barely caught onto the edges of the console, and from there, she looked up at the Doctor and smirked. "Another happy landing."

"And you used to criticize my piloting" the Doctor replied with a frown.

Ian was already at the door. "Let's save the flirting for later" he said with a grin, "your distress call awaits." He opened the door, and almost instantly backed away. "This is incredibly hot!"

"We've landed in a heat venting section of the ship, of course it's going to be hot" the Doctor commented. "Well, let's not keep the Humans hanging, off we go! Through the door!"

Rose followed suit, and had the impression she hit a wall when she stepped out. "Hot and moist. I'd say we've landed in the ship's sauna if it weren't for all the gear inside here."

"I just told you they're venting systems" the Doctor grumbled. "Working at full tilt to cool the rest of the ship down."

"The two of you are just as bad as the other when it comes to picking landing spots, aren't you?" Barbara grated as she stepped outside as well.

"I picked a spot where there was enough space to materialize the TARDIS" Rose protested. She made for the TARDIS door to close it, when she heard a snap of fingers and the door closed without assistance.

"What?" She spun around, looking at the Doctor, who shrugged.

"Sorry, reflex. Not really important. Let's go and meet the locals." The Doctor opened the door he'd been standing near to.

The locals looked human indeed, and there were three of them. They were also running at full tilt, and the lead among them, a woman, yelled an urgent "Get out of there!"

The Doctor was out the door before the woman was even done shouting, and the rest of the quartet followed suit, just in time for one of the men to reach the door and bar it shut, while the woman halted and glared at the intruders.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor" – "I'm the Bad Wolf" came the simultaneous answers. "And they're Ian and Barbara Chesterton" Rose added.

"Then you're not police?" the man who'd shut the door asked.

"That depends, did you have a crime to confess?" the Doctor replied, and Rose groaned.

"Don't mind him, he's always like this" stepping in front of the woman. "Not police, we came for your distress signal, and I think…" and she briefly stood on tiptoe, head turning like on a swivel.

"Yeah, engines went dead four minutes ago" the woman said as fast as she could manage.

Now that she had time to observe, Rose could notice how despite her light black attire, the woman was covered in sweat; same went for her companions. She wrinkled her nose. "You've been in panic mode for a lot longer than four minutes."

"Which is why we should stop talking and get to engineering" the second man said, an early-middle aged man with black hair and an unshaven beard. He added a stern "Captain!"

The ship cut off any attempt at continuing the conversation with a metallic "Secure closure active", which prompted a "What?" from the captain.

"The ship's gone m-"

Rose had put a finger on his lips. "Shhh, listen" she said in a whisper. "We've got incoming."

Sure enough, hurried footsteps made themselves heard, and soon enough a mousey black-haired woman was running into what was becoming a very crowded corridor, with an annoyed "Who activated secure closure? I nearly got locked in-"

She halted, both her movement and her sentence, staring at the Doctor and then at Rose, her face somehow losing some colour despite the heat and recent effort.

"Have we met before?" asked Rose, and it was the Doctor who answered.

"I think she and us meet on another occasion. We probably don't want to know your name" he added with a frown of his eyebrows for the frightened woman.

"No risk of her remembering you" the Captain butted in, "when we first met her she'd lost most of her memory. Didn't even know her own name, and didn't have any proper ID – only called herself 'me'. Her name's Erina, now, Erina Lessak. Hurried man here is Orin Scannell, and behind you is Riley Vashtee. I'm Kath McDonnell."

"The Bad Wolf, the Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Chesterton" Rose rattled, pointing her thumb at all four as she repeated names.

The ship's voice interface sounded off again. "Impact projection in forty-two minutes twenty-seven seconds" it said very matter-of-factly as Barbara walked to one of the portholes.

"Doctor" she called, and the Time Lord quickly glanced at her, before he frowned at McDonnell.

"We'll get out of this" McDonnell said as reassuringly as she could manage. "I promise."

"Normally, that's my line" the Doctor replied, and he stepped past McDonnell to join Barbara's side, and froze up when he reached the porthole.

"What is it, Doctor?" Rose asked from behind him, and the Time Lord pivoted back to face her.

"We aren't getting any time to explore before evacuating them, that ship's headed straight for the nearest star."

Rose sent an annoyed look of her own. "On the plus side, this means the antigrav can function without engines long enough to evacuate the crew, we'd all be space pizzas by now if it couldn't." She ignored the Doctor's disapproving frown and turned back to McDonnell. "Where are the rest of you, and how fast can you get them here?"

"There's only seven of us" McDonnell supplied, and Scannell stepped forward to add his bit of information.

"We're an automated cargo transport, we just keep the ship spaceworthy."

"Well, forget the cargo and the ship, and just call the other three, we're leaving" Rose said, and she marched back towards the door they'd come in from, prompting a series of alarmed cries from the crew.

The young woman pulled on her time sense as she reached for the door, and jumped away as if she'd been burned.

"Problem?" the Doctor asked from near the porthole.

Rose nodded and bit her lip. "Small one. Ship must have started venting all the excess heat through that area."

A faint smile appeared on the Doctor's lips, prompting a stern look from Ian. "Don't tell me you're glad you get to explore after all."

"He's really not" Rose cut in. "Stranded ship, no engines, no TARDIS, forty-two minutes before we crash into a sun, and all we've got is the contents of our pockets and a pair of sonic screwdrivers. It's not the discovery of new tech which makes him happy."

"Then what does?" Barbara asked, turning away from the porthole.

Rose's lips formed an impish smile. "He's thinking about how annoyed you guys are all going to be when we pull this off."

McDonnell turned to the fourth woman present. "You obviously used to know at least one of our passengers. Do you remember something important about one of them?"

The mousey woman sounded very distant as she replied. "Enough to be sure they can save you… All you've really got to do is keep yourselves alive until they manage."

The Doctor cleared his throat. "I'm sure your memories of us would be fascinating, but they'll have to wait until later, we are on a clock here." He looked pointedly at McDonnell. "I don't suppose there's a way to reroute the venting heat elsewhere."

"You don't suppose correctly. And we're too close to the sun to launch escape pods, they'd never achieve escape velocity."

"To engineering it is, then."

"Is there any living cargo on this ship?" Rose chimed in, and McDonnell turned to her.

"Just a container of processed Ood, why?"

Rose's eyes went wide open, while the Doctor scowled at the ship's captain. "If I didn't know better I'd say you were actively trying to make me dislike you."

"She's got bigger worries, Doctor" Barbara scolded him. "What _are_ processed Ood?"

"The most common species of slave at this point in the history of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire" the Doctor said harshly.

Barbara's ire turned to McDonnell. "You've got _slaves_ on board."

"That might not be the biggest problem they represent" Rose mumbled, which earned her scowls from both Chestertons.

"I hope you have a very good reason for making such a statement" Ian said quietly.

"Really don't have the time to tell that story right now, ask me again later" Rose replied with composure. She turned back to the Doctor. "You said you have Jack's vortex manipulator?"

He winced. "Stayed in its hiding place in 1930, the Daleks would have detected it if I'd kept it on me."

"Trip to engineering it is. Captain, please show us the way."

The group took off at a run, following the lead of McDonnell, with the Doctor and Rose hot on her heels. They were the first three to climb down a narrow set of stairs into the noisy, cluttered engineering section, instantly noticing the wreckage straight ahead.

"You've had some cowboys down there, Captain" the Doctor commented just as Scannell and Riley ran past the first trio.

"What the hell happened?" Scannell said as he reached what was left of the main engine, followed by a distraught "Oh, it's wrecked" by Riley, who briefly bent to examine the damage.

"Quite efficiently at that" the Doctor said clinically. "Someone did that on purpose, and they knew what they were doing."

"Doesn't look like the kind of damage we could fix in less than forty minutes" Rose noted tensely, her fingers drumming on her leg. Ahead of her, McDonnell was asking about two other crew members; meanwhile, Barbara and Ian had also climbed down, only leaving behind a hesitant Erina in the middle of the steps.

"Tell me we're not stranded in the middle of nowhere with less than an hour to live" Barbara asked levelly.

"Not quite the middle of nowhere, it's the Torajii system" Rose answered.

"Nowhere near Earth, then."

"About half a universe away." She bit her lower lip. "Doctor, you're making that frown again."

"I'm trying to pretend this jumpy band of merrymen aren't actually trying to get me in touch with my inner William de Wendenal."

"Your inner _who_?"

"The sheriff of Nottingham" Barbara supplied.

"You actually can tell that off the top of your head?" an astonished Riley butted in.

"Can't everyone?" the Doctor snarked. "And since you're back with us, care to explain about the energy scoops for fusion?"

"If they're energy scoops, and since we're in 4108, they've been illegal for at least two years" Rose added with a frown of her own at Riley.

"We're on three-year tours of duty when doing this trade route" the man replied uncomfortably. "We're due to upgrade next docking."

"Fantastic." Rose raised her voice. "Captain, there's no point, these engines aren't taking us anywhere in the next thirty-eight minutes."

McDonnell's attention stayed on Scannell. "Well?"

The man tried typing a few more instructions on a command console, with no success. "No response. Main systems are burnt out, and the controls are wrecked. Can't get them back online, can't access the auxiliaries."

"Well, we should be off to the auxiliaries, then" the Doctor said loudly, and McDonnell turned to him.

"Need one of you to go access them with Riley. Got two crew members missing, I can't spare another two to get past the seals."

"Obviously there are seals everywhere on the ship, you've got to keep your cargo contained" the Doctor said sarcastically. "Good thing we've got two sonic screwdrivers handy."

Scannell shook his head. "They're deadlock seals. All twenty-nine of them. You've got to guess the passwords."

"Guess the passwords?"

"They're randomly generated" Riley supplied. "And it's a two-person job to open them. I know most of them, but in case I'm hitting a snag, could Missus Chesterton come with? You seem quite good at trivia" he added with a smile at her.

"I'm rubbish at some topics" Barbara replied frankly. "But Ian can usually cover what I don't get. Between the three of us, we should do fine."

"You'll never get there in time" Scannell said darkly, earning himself matching looks from Rose and the Doctor.

"Well, obviously, if they've got to stay here and keep listening to the dire portents of Mister Doom and Gloom while the clock is ticking" Rose said sarcastically.

"Madam Wolf is losing her temper, but she's right, we really should be going" Ian said, and he, Barbara and Riley took off, pushing past the still Erina, with the Doctor's voice calling after them.

"Be careful, you two!"

"Us three!" Barbara shouted back. "And you five!"

"Oh, right" the Doctor mumbled, and he looked at Rose. "At least, I'm not the only one who's rude in this room."

"Oi!" Rose slapped his arm. Any further comment she might have was cut off by a man's voice shouting in the intercom.

"McDonnell, it's Ashton!"

The woman was back at the intercom in three quick strides. "Where are you? Is Korwin with you?"

"We're at the med centre. Come up here now, you need to see this!"

"Great." She strode back to the other four. "Scannell, and the two rude visitors, you're with me. Erina, snap out of it and get us some heat visors and gloves, then join us there."

Erina took off with evident relief, and the four others made their way to the med centre at a rapid clip, McDonnell in the lead, and came upon a bald man and a curly-haired woman in scrubs trying to push a writhing man into what Rose identified as a stasis chamber.

"Korwin!" McDonnell called out. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Help me!" the man said with clear pain. "It's burning me!"

"How long has he been like this?" the Doctor asked.

"Ashton just brought him in" the woman in scrubs answered.

"No more than ten minutes" the bald man added, and Rose jostled past him, sonic screwdriver out, while the Doctor did the same on the other side of Korwin. "Hey!"

"Sorry about that" Rose let out as she and the Doctor scanned the man in parallel.

"What are you two doing?" McDonnell protested.

"Basic medical check-up. None of you get closer, he's dangerous."

"Don't be so stupid. That's my husband."

"Who's showing a set of worrisome energy readings and an internal body temperature which should have already boiled him dead from the inside, so again, no, Captain, husband excuse doesn't let you get any closer" Rose replied harshly. "He's dangerous."

"And he's just sabotaged our ship" the bald man added.

"No way. He wouldn't do that!" McDonnell protested.

"I saw it happen, Captain."

Meanwhile the Doctor had pocketed his sonic screwdriver again. "Sir, can you hear me?"

"Please, it burns!"

"I know it does. We're going to put you under, but I need to take a look at your eyes before we do. Can you open them?"

"I can't!" the man said desperately.

"Of course you can, unless you've got a very good reason."

"Don't make me look at you, please!" Korwin screamed again.

"Might be a bad idea" Rose snapped as she reached for a hypo-gun in a nearby tray. "Is that a sedative?"

"Yes" the woman in scrubs answered.

"Hopefully it still works on his biology." She applied the hypo-gun on the writhing man and depressed the trigger. Within seconds, Korwin had fallen into a drug-induced stillness, and Rose looked up at the Doctor. "Sorry, I don't think we should have made him open his eyes."

"Neither do I" the Doctor replied quietly, and he turned to the woman in scrubs. "Good thing you've got a stasis chamber, keep him sedated in there. You'll want to throw in the strongest antipyretics you've got, and run a bioscan and a tissue profile down to metabolic process level while you're at it."

"Already doing that."

"Finally, a bit of competence in this drifting mass of nonsense."

"Doctor" Rose groused, and the Time Lord went on.

"Right, we should ask if anyone else on board is presenting these symptoms."

"Not so far" Abi replied.

"Not even the Ood?"

"I don't know."

"Then you probably want to have someone keeping a close eye on the security cameras watching their hold, Captain."

"We don't have any cameras in the hold" McDonnell replied uncomfortably.

"Of course…"

"The Ood can wait" McDonnell snapped. What's wrong with my husband?"

"Some sort of infection. We'll know more after the test results. Right now, we need to move and let the competent exception do her job."

"Want me to stay behind in case something happens?" Rose asked, and the Doctor shook his head negatively.

"We're in the middle of a paradox loop right now. If we separate, that's twice as many chances one of us gets killed and the whole thing unravels. Seeing as how important you are to the fabric of this universe, we really can't afford to take the extra risks, so no wandering off is back to being rule number one."

"What the hell is he on about?" the bald man asked angrily, and Rose gave him a flat look.

"Your name's Ashton, right?"

"What of it?"

"I don't like calling people by impersonal labels."

"So?"

"So, Mister Ashton, save that question for later, after we've gotten ourselves out of this mess." She turned back to the Doctor. "Back to the lower decks?"

"What for?" Scannell asked. The ship's computer voice replied before the Doctor could.

"Heat shield failing. At twenty-five percent. Impact in thirty-two fifty."

The Time Lord scowled. "What she just said."

"Lead the way, Captain" Rose demanded, and McDonnell complied without protest, Rose and Scannell following in her wake while Ashton stayed still and glared at the Doctor.

"Who the hell do you two think you are?"

"I'm the Doctor, she's the Bad Wolf, we're both rude and not ginger, and we're going to save your lives. Any other questions, just to be sure we can lose the others?"

"No" the man groused.

"Then we're due at the power generators." The Doctor strode out, with a last holler for the woman in scrubs. "Competent exception, call us if there's any news!"

"I'm Abi Lerner!"

"If you say so!"

* * *

Meanwhile, Riley, Barbara and Ian had reached the first of the doors, and the crew member was rapidly typing on a portable computer he'd connected to the door's command console.

"I still think the Doctor would have been better suited for a series of trivia pursuits" Barbara remarked from where she stood, a couple of steps back.

"We both know how distracted he can get" Ian replied to her, holding the clamp ready. "Also, given his current stress level, he'd likely be busier flinging insults than finding answers."

"I suppose. This version of him is really rude. Mister Vashti, what are you typing?"

"Riley, please" the crewman replied. "I'm getting the door ready to pop the question. Ian, fix the clamp, would you?"

"Of course."

While Barbara's husband executed that task, Riley spoke on. "Each door's trip code is the answer to a random question set by the crew. Nine tours back, we got drunk, thought them up. Reckoning was, if we're hijacked, we're the only ones who know all the answers."

"You and anyone who can figure them out."

"Right in one, Missus Chesterton."

"Barbara. So you type in the right answer."

"Yeah. It sends an unlock pulse to the clamp. But we only get one chance per door. Get it wrong, the whole system freezes."

Barbara winced. "On second thought, it's really a good thing this version Doctor isn't the one helping you with this. I can easily imagine the rant, and it would be a long and very pointed one."

"He wouldn't be wrong. They really should be calling it the First Bloated and Wasteful Human Empire, seeing as how we're still holding onto three whole galaxies despite all the messes happening on every level."

"Not a big fan of the current regime, then" Ian remarked. "Clamp's on."

"And we got an easy one. Date of SS Pentallian's first flight. That's alright. Go!"

Ian activated the clamp, and the door whooshed open. Riley was already in motion.

"Tell you what, we get ourselves out of this fix, I'll gladly tell you all I think about the Empire over a pint. Now, come on, twenty-eight more to go!"

The trio had just made it past the door when Rose's voice sounded from the intercom.

"Ian? Barbara? Riley? How is it going?"

"We're hitting door twenty-eight" Barbara replied.

"You'd better get a move on, then" the Doctor snarked.

"See what I meant?" Ian said quietly as he nodded at Riley, signalling that the clamp was in position.

"Need help with that one" the crewman said. "Find the next number in the sequence: three one three, three three one, three six seven."

"Should we call the crew member who remembers the answer to that one?" Barbara suggested. She was met by a negative headshake.

"Crew's changed since we set the questions. Nobody on who's remembering that one."

"You have got to be joking" Barbara said flatly.

"Three seven nine" the Doctor's voice said from the intercom.

"No rude retort?"

"I'm saving them up for when we've got the time. Three seven nine, enter it."

"Are you sure?" Riley called. "We only get one chance."

"It's a sequence of happy primes."

"He's right" Ian said. "Enter it, Riley."

"Good enough for me." He typed and nodded at Ian, who activated the clamp again. The door whooshed open. "We're through."

"Then keep moving as fast as you can" the Doctor snapped, "and make a note to book a decent course in recreational mathematics."

"And the three of you be careful" Rose added. "You might meet loose Ood somewhere on your way. They're not normally aggressive, but if they got out, one of you will need to keep them away from the other two."

"What do they look like?" Ian asked.

"Bipedal Lovecraftian horrors with a lamp-like bulb at the end of the tentacles dropping from their mouths. It can be used as a weapon."

"Great. Clamp's on."

Riley groaned. "Got another one nobody will know."

"What's the question?" the Doctor asked.

"Who had the most number ones pre-download, Elvis or the Beatles?"

"Elvis" Ian and Barbara answered together. Riley typed the answer, and Door 27 whooshed open like the other two.

"How do you two know what a download is?" the Doctor asked, dumbfounded.

Barbara had a little laugh. "We travelled with you for two years, Doctor, remember?"

* * *

On the level of the generators, the Doctor cut the intercom with a scowl. "It was nearly two thousand years ago, how was I supposed to remember?"

"This version of you is a bit forgetful, aren't you?" Rose remarked. Meanwhile, McDonnell was looking gobsmacked.

"You're two thousand years old?"

"I'm not two thousand years old, I'm two thousand years clever" the Doctor retorted, his sonic screwdriver whining as he ran it over the machinery back on the engineering deck. "I wanted to get to the generator because we've still got quite a few systems still working on this thing, and since we've got no engines, we're going to have power to spare."

"And how is that good news, Doctor?" Ashton asked with some hostility.

"He's going to boost the heat shielding well beyond its nominal levels" Rose answered for him. "At the rate it's been suffering, the whole thing would burn long before the end of your smug computer's countdown."

The whirring intensified, and something sparked on the generator.

"Don't you dare make power fail!" McDonnell shouted in panic.

The ship computer spoke up. "Heat shields restored. Operating at three hundred percent efficiency."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and looked silently at Ashton, then at McDonnell, who both blushed.

"You couldn't have known" Rose said with a smile, "but yeah, he is _that_ impressive."

"Three hundred percent efficiency?" McDonnell croaked.

"Should be enough to last us past the point where the auxiliary engines can't provide escape velocity" the Doctor replied. "We've got a little over twenty-seven minutes instead of less than five."

"Then we've still got a chance" Scannell said.

"Yeah, we do" The Doctor replied with a smile.

The captain reactivated communications. "Everyone, this is McDonnell. The Doctor is in charge until further notice."

"Thank you" the Doctor replied quietly.

"I might need you here very soon" Abi Lerner's voice sounded off, laced with anxiety. "These readings are starting to scare me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, Korwin's body is changing. His whole biological make-up. It's impossible."

"We should go back, Doctor" Rose said tensely.

"We're sticking together."

"Actually – urgent assistance requested" Abi's voice made, shaking with fear. "Urgent assistance!"

"One of you stay here!" Rose shouted, taking off at full speed; the Doctor added a "You heard her!" as he followed suit. Ashton stayed behind, while McDonnell and Scannell followed. They were in range of active communicators long enough to hear an inhuman voice utter the words 'burn with me', and then Abi Lerner's screams.

There was no Korwin in the stasis chamber by the time the quartet reached the med centre, and no Abi Lerner. There was, however, the charred silhouette of a woman burned on an x-ray shield, which the captain ran past without seeing, but which her crew member immediately noticed.

"Korwin's gone" McDonnell said, while Scannell's voice made itself heard.

"Oh my God… Tell me that's not Lerner."

"Goddess, and she'd be lying" the Doctor said quietly.

Rose was already scanning the burned silhouette with her sonic. "Endothermic vaporisation" she said. "She must have been terrified, but she didn't have time to suffer. It was nearly instantaneous."

"Only thing it could have been. Burn with me. But there'd be a second print." The Doctor went to the scanning equipment and peeked at what it displayed.

"Burn with me" Scannell repeated. "That's what we just heard Korwin say."

"What?" McDonnell was shocked. "You think…? No way! Scannell, Korwin is not a killer. He can't vaporise people. He's human!"

"At present, his biological makeup isn't that of a human" the Doctor said matter-of-factly. "Right before he moved, his bioscan results returned an internal temperature above five thousand degrees, and a surface temperature above a hundred Celsius. He didn't boil from inside out because there's no water left in his body. It's been entirely decomposed and the oxygen's been expelled. His entire circulatory system has become filled with hydrogen."

"The test results are wrong!"

Rose stepped in front of the woman and brought both her hands to rest on her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Captain. Your husband's gone. He's been taken over by whatever parasite infected him."

"It might not be a parasite" the Doctor commented. "Could be a mutagenic virus, a nano-agent or the result of an extraordinary psychic attack, to name a few other possibilities. Whatever the method, though, the result is weaponization of a human body."

"Stop talking like he's some kind of experiment!"

"You need to be the one to do some talking, and fast" Rose said sternly, using her hold on McDonnell's shoulders to shake her once. "Where's this ship been? Have you made planet-fall recently? Docked with any other vessels? Any kind of external contact at all?"

"What is this?" McDonnell protested, wrenching herself free. "An interrogation?"

Rose's eyes glinted. "Captain, we've got a hostile unclassified lifeform on this ship capable of eliminating any organic water-based lifeform you have on board in less than a heartbeat. It's well past time you and your crew quit with the protestations and the lies. We've got less than twenty-five minutes, less than fifteen hundred seconds, to find out what the hell has been going wrong with this ship, and a lot less than that if we want to stop Korwin from killing again."

"We've not made planet-fall, haven't docked and haven't had any external contact for the past nine days, and we haven't left the charted trade routes" McDonnell replied, her voice hardly above a murmur. "I don't know what's happening. We're just a cargo ship halfway through its tour of duty. I can't help you." She turned away, coming to face the charred outline of Abi Lerner.

"I've got nothing either" Scannell said. "Now can we give her a minute?"

"I'm fine" McDonnell said, turning away and heading for the communicator. "I've got to warn everybody else." She activated the device. "Everybody, listen to me. Something has infected Korwin. We think he killed Abi Lerner. None of you must go anywhere near him, is that clear?"

"Understood, Captain" Ashton's voice acknowledged. "Erina, if you're not already close to them, get back to Engineering with that equipment."

"Yes, boss" came the muttered response.

McDonnell returned her attention to the Doctor, who was now done with the scanning equipment. "Is the infection permanent? Can you cure him?"

"I'm sorry, I can't" the Doctor admitted, and McDonnell turned to Rose.

"And you? Can you do anything?"

"She mustn't" the Doctor answered before Rose could say anything.

The young woman glared at the Time Lord. "The Bad Wolf could."

"And if, in the process, whatever has taken over Korwin got a chance to take you over, it could use all the powers of space and time and instantly destroy all of us. The paradox loop never closes. The whole of reality collapses into nonexistence. No single person's life is worth that kind of risk."

The Doctor and Rose locked stares for a tense moment, which was broken by Scannell.

"Excuse me, I don't really understand any of this… But what you both said, about your name being the Bad Wolf, was that a lie?"

"We really don't have the kind of time needed even for an approximate answer" the Doctor said. He turned back to the captain. "I'm sorry, but we can't help your husband until we've figured out what's gone wrong with him, and even if we do, there's no guarantee she can afford to try."

"Thank you" McDonnell said quietly.

The Doctor nodded. "Are you absolutely certain nothing happened which could even remotely have helped provoke this? Nobody working on anything secret? No dangerous materials among your cargo? Because it's vital that you tell us."

McDonnell shook her head. "I know every inch of this ship. I know every detail of my crew's lives, except for Erina of course, but there's nothing that's happened since her memories began that could have anything to do with this."

"We're both obviously in her memories" Rose countered. "Obviously, we can't push any questioning or observing too far, and we'll have to be extremely careful, but we've got to talk to her."

McDonnell looked at the white-haired young woman and then at the white-haired older man, finding similar expressions of grim resolution on both their faces.

"Ashton, Erina, when the two of you are together, come back to the med centre. Stay away from Korwin."

"As to the rest of you" the Doctor picked up, "Ian, Barbara, and random knowledge, how far have you got?"

"We're on door seventeen."

"Better pick up the pace if you can, you'll still have to reboot the auxiliary engines once you get to area one."

"Burn with me."

All four occupants of the med centre blanched.

"Oh God, no…" Scannell breathed.

"Ian, Riley, Barbara, stop whatever you're doing and hide wherever you can, now!" Rose shouted at a frantic clip.

"Only possible hideout is an escape pod!" Riley shouted back.

"Then get there! If Korwin gets to you, he can vaporize you all in less than a second!"

"It's not Korwin, it's Ashton!"

"Burn with me!"

"Airlock sealed" the computer's voice said pleasantly.

"We've got to look for Erina" McDonnell said urgently, and she ran out, Scannell going after her.

"Stay together!" the Doctor barked as they left, before returning his attention to his partner. "Rose."

"Doctor."

"We're the only two people left who can get to Area 17. We've got to either get Ashton away from the other three or-"

"Pod jettison initiated."

"Oh my God!" came Barbara's voice through the communicator. "Ashton's trying to jettison us! You've got to help us!"

"Where are you?" Rose asked frantically.

"Escape pod in Area 17!"

"Jettison held. Escape pod stabilized."

"Tsilpinski sequence." Riley's voice was half-relieved, half-satisfied. "This'll get him."

"Jettison activated."

This time, Riley too was in full panic. "He smashed the circuit! I can't stop the sequence! I can't stop it!"

"Riley." Rose was making her best effort to sound calm, but she couldn't stop a small quiver.

"Madam Wolf."

"Is there an airlock with a ready spacesuit close to the med centre?"

"Airlock sealed" the computer said, almost as if it were mocking her.

"There's one right before door 29, but you can't go out there!"

"Is the tether strong enough to be used as a towline for a pod in fifty-hyperbaric atmospheric conditions?"

"We're too close to the sun! A human body will boil in a matter of minutes!"

"Good thing I'm no longer human, me."

"Rose, you can't" the Doctor said low enough to avoid his voice being picked up by the communicator.

"It doesn't matter which of us takes the risk to bring them back" Rose responded with the same quiet volume. "If either of us dies now, the result is the same."

"But- but you can't-"

"Ian and Barbara are here because of me, Doctor" Rose said, her eyes fierce. "I've already buried a companion of mine; I'm not burying your two first ones too."

She sprinted out of the med centre, the Doctor following at the same speed. "Even if you survive, you'll be too drained to think of or to do anything else!" he shouted after her.

"I'm not even twenty-five, you're over two thousand" she shouted back. "If anybody's brains are going to save us all, it's yours, not mine. It's got to be me, Doctor!"

She skidded to a halt in front of the spacesuit Riley had mentioned. It was of an almost identical model to the one she remembered her second Doctor wearing less than five years into the past for her, and she couldn't hold back an ironic smile. Apparently, the Doctor had had the same thought, going by his words.

"Of course. We're less than a century removed from that other time above the Beast's prison, and a lot of their equipment was positively ancient."

"It's also very quick to put on and secure" Rose replied as she climbed into the spacesuit. "Could even survive very short exposure to ordinary vacuum if need be, if one's body is tough enough."

"I still think I'd have a better chance out there" the Doctor tried as he attached the tether.

"We've all got a better chance if it's you staying in here" Rose countered as she pulled her arms through the sleeves. "Helmet?"

The Doctor attached it and made sure the suit was secured and powered on. He then gave the tether a check, and took a couple of step backs, a wan smile on his face.

"I want that spacesuit back in one piece" he said, echoing Rose's own words to him, so many years ago for him.

Rose smiled from inside the spacesuit. "I'll see you later."

"Not if I see you first."

Rose's smile faded. "Try and find out where Scannell, McDonnell and Erina are if you can."

"I will."

The Doctor left the airlock and sealed it behind himself, then released its opening.

"Well, then, here you go, Rose" the young woman mumbled to herself. "Once more unto the breach."

* * *

Inside the drifting space-pod, a grim quiet had replaced the earlier panic.

"The wonderful world of space travel" Riley commented bitterly. "The prettier it looks, the more likely it is to kill you."

"How come we can look at the sun at all from this close?" Ian couldn't help himself asking.

"All the viewport covers have been made with adaptive radiation filtering materials adjusting them within tolerance levels for humans for nearly five centuries now. You've clearly got experience in space, would have thought you two'd know that already."

"We're from the year 1969" Barbara admitted with a weak smile.

Riley swallowed. "You're kidding me."

"We're not" Ian replied. "In our time, the only planetary body on which humans have ever set foot is Earth itself. There's talks of a moon landing mission from the USA happening during the summer, but for us, it hasn't happened yet."

Riley looked at the other two with astonishment. "How's that even possible?"

"We're time travellers" Barbara explained. "We travelled with the Doctor for a couple of years or so a while back, starting late in 1963 – it was hard to keep track. Then a few days back we met Rose, and she invited us to take a trip or two with her, for old times' sake."

"Rose?"

"That's her actual name. She's not really called the Bad Wolf."

"Oh." Riley looked down. "I was kind-of hoping she really _was_ the Bad Wolf, not just using the name."

"You know of her?"

"My great-granddad met with her once, back when the Empire was still the Federation. He said there wasn't anything impossible for the Bad Wolf if she didn't want it to be."

"Sounds like Rose alright" Ian said. "If she can save us, she will."

"That's impossible" Riley said forlornly. "Our heat shields will pack in any minute, and when they do gravity controls will follow suit. We'll be crushed inside this pod long before we even hit the sun."

Barbara smiled sadly. "There's still hope. Even if sometimes with them all that's left is a fool's hope."

Riley looked at the couple, one, then the other. "I should be shutting up and letting you two say goodbye to one another."

"There's three of us trapped in here" Ian replied kindly. "You don't have to be alone at the end."

"But you can't be alone with me here." Riley swallowed again. "Just… one last question, and then I'll turn around and shut up. I promise."

"You don't have to" Barbara reinforced.

"I'll do it anyway. I just wanted to know… Why did you stop traveling with the Doctor the first time? Was it because?..."

Barbara had another sad smile, and Ian took hold of her hands. "It was because there were too many days like this one."

Riley nodded. "Huh."

And true to his word, he turned around and went silent. But Ian and Barbara, even with only one another left to focus their last moments on, couldn't bring themselves to talk.

And then the escape pod shook with a sudden jolt, and Riley let out a squeak of fright.

Then, for the first time in the past half hour, the sound of the ship system's computer voice was welcome to one of those who'd boarded it. "Pod successfully remagnetised."

And the upper half of a spacesuit came into view, upside down, from the top of the pod's port. Inside the suit, Rose was floating, her breathing so intense its motions on her face were clearly visible through the barriers, and her eyes tightly clamped shut.

"By the stars" Riley breathed. "She's done it. She's saved us!"

The laughter and the embraces lasted all the way back inside the cargo ship.

* * *

As soon as the locks on it disengaged, Ian and Barbara almost jumped out of the escape pod. Near to it, Rose was crawling and struggling with her spacesuit. The Doctor and McDonnell also came running in, but the Chestertons were closest.

"Rose!" Barbara shouted with evident concern. "Rose! Are you alright?"

"Stay away from me!" the young woman shouted back, her voice laced with pain. She pointed her face in the direction of the Doctor, and barely lifted her eyelids for the briefest of instants, letting two narrow beams of white light shine from them.

"What happened to her?" McDonnell asked frantically. "Is it the same as with Korwin?"

Rose's face turned in her direction, and this time, her shout was a raging one. "It's _your_ fault, Captain McDonnell!"

The woman staggered back. Then she regained some composure. "Riley, run to Area 10. Scannell's there, he needs you with the doors. We've still got twelve minutes."

Riley ran off as the Doctor came to a crouch in front of the woman in the spacesuit.

"Rose, I have to take that thing from you. How can you give it to me?"

"It's pointless, Doctor" the young woman replied through gritted teeth, "it'd only make the two of us contaminated, that thing is far too big and strong for either of us to contain it. It's _her_ fault, anyway. Typical human. They always have to grab whatever's nearest and bleed it dry to save a couple of quid. They mined that sun, stripped its surface for cheap fuel. They should have scanned for life!"

The Doctor blinked rapidly. "Oh no. That sun's alive. It's a living organism."

"The entire thing is alive, up to the thinnest layers of its atmosphere. They scooped out part of its heart for fuel, and now it's screaming!"

"But that's impossible!" McDonnell exclaimed herself. "Doctor, what's really happening? How could a sun even be alive?"

"Because it's living inside of me!" Rose shouted.

The Doctor scooped the young woman in his arms. "Clear the way, I've got to freeze her quickly, before she's gone. Can your stasis chamber go down to 73 K?"

"Seventy-three what?"

"Minus two hundred Celsius" Ian translated, his voice full of worry. "Doctor, you can't! It will kill her."

"No, it won't. Time Lord cells have been spreading everywhere in her body for over a year, and even if Rose can't actually regenerate she's extremely durable. There's a chance I can freeze the sun out of her before it manages to entirely take her over."

"And become that 'Bad Wolf' thing?"

"Small mercies, we'd already be dead if it could. Now out of the way!"

The Doctor ran off, Rose in his arms, and Ian, Barbara and McDonnell in tow. They reached the med centre as the computer announced seven minutes thirty remaining before impact.

"Ian, take over and keep her inside the stasis chamber until I say to let go! The star fragment inside her will understand what's about to happen, it'll try to use her to escape."

"I've got this, Doctor" Ian said, taking Rose away from his arms and leaning her on the stasis chamber's board. He had to pin her down – the instant her shoulders hit the board, the young woman started to struggle and yell.

"No, you've got to give it back!"

"Rose, it's alright, the Doctor is going to help you."

"I'm not the one that needs helping!"

"Riley, Scannell, how many doors left?" McDonnell shouted over her voice for the communicator.

"We're stuck!" Scannell shouted back. "He can't remember his bloody favourite colour!"

"Are you kidding me?" McDonnell screamed.

"What are you still doing there?" the Doctor shouted in her direction. "Get down to the doors and help them get to auxiliary, and when you get there, vent the fuel! Give back what you took!"

"If we vent all that fuel now and the auxiliary engines still work, we'll only die a couple of hours later!" McDonnell yelled back. "We'll never have enough left to leave the gravity well!"

Then Ian came flying and slammed into her, and the only reason the captain remained upright was because the impact flattened her against the wall.

Rose was rising from the board, her eyes still closed, and her movements slow and deliberate. Her voice had taken on otherworldly echoes.

"Give. It. Back. Or burn. With. Me."

This time, it was the Doctor who shouted in panic. "RUN!"

He waited for Barbara, Ian and McDonnell to stumble outside, but he did not leave.

"Rose, my love, don't let this happen. You've got to fight this" the Doctor pleaded.

"I can't!" Rose whimpered, her voice still laced with echoes. "Doctor, it burns!"

"Focus! Focus! Focus!"

"I can't!" Rose yelled.

"Of course you can. Please, you've got to try."

"I _CAN'T_ , DOCTOR! I'M STUCK ON THE DAMNED DRUMS!"

"Oh no" the Doctor said in a whisper. "The drums. I'd forgotten."

Rose began a shambling walk in his direction. She wasn't yelling any more, but this time, her diction followed a quick four-beat pattern.

"You'll burn with me. You'll burn with me. You'll burn with me. You'll burn with me."

The Doctor snarled his response. "I won't burn with you. Not in a very long time!"

And he too ran off, taking the direction of the safety doors, followed by the stagger-stepping Rose, her voice stuck repeating the four-word litany.

He'd left her far behind and out of hearing range by the time he reached Door 1, where Scannell and Riley were desperate over one more answer.

"Doctor, who's the first human who ran a scientific experiment to capture the electricity from a lightning strike?"

"Thomas Dali- No! Ben Franklin! Ben Franklin! Ben Franklin!"

Franklin was the expected answer, and the Doctor ran into the auxiliary control room the instant he could slip through the opening door.

"McDonnell was right, we've got barely enough fuel in reserve for a reprieve" he said, his face distorted in a mask reflecting all his determination to live and save all those he could. "But that's all we need, just enough fuel to get away far enough to get back to the TARDIS."

"What's the TARDIS?" Riley shouted as he entered.

"Our ship, Rose's and mine! And if she can travel through all of time and space, she certainly can tow a smuggling cargo ship from the forty-first century."

The ship brutally accelerated away from the sun, wrenching itself free of its immediate grasp. Within moments, most of the alarms shut down, leaving behind only one last computer warning.

"Fuel reserves critical. Internal gravity failure in approximately three hours thirty-five minutes."

The Doctor allowed himself one victorious smile, and then he ran back out of the auxiliary control room, nearly flattening Scannell in the process.

The first person he ran into wasn't Rose, however. It was a crying McDonnell, kneeling down in front of a desiccated husk in clothes he immediately identified as Korwin's.

The Doctor skidded to a full halt, his face draining of all colour. "Oh no." He focused on his time sense, desperately hoping that the same hadn't happened to Rose, that-

"Doctor, please! Let her save him!" McDonnell's cry wrenched him from his attempt.

The glare he brought to bear on the captain was full-on that of the Oncoming Storm, and his voice sounded like ice. "Reality might be about to unravel entirely because you were too cheap to spend the money on a legally required change to your fuel provisioning system, and your first priority is still to plead with me just in case one the two most important people in all of time and space might agree to risk dying again for your dead husband and destroying everything that ever existed, if by some improbable chance it hasn't already started to happen?"

"Doctor, please" a woman's voice sounded from the communications system.

"What?" the Doctor barked back.

"She and Korwin really never had the money for the upgrade. All her mistakes were honest mistakes; all she wants is a bit more hope for herself. And Rose is alive."

At those last four words, the Doctor's nostrils flared, and he forced himself to regain some control over his temper.

"Rose is alive" he repeated tensely.

"We're at door 24" the woman replied. "She's out of it, but she's alive."

The Doctor stood still for a few seconds, and then allowed himself a long sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Miss Lessak" he finally said, his voice reflecting his gratitude. "Or perhaps I should say 'Thank you, Miss Me'."

"You're welcome, Doctor."

* * *

When Rose came to, she was lying in one of the beds of the infirmary on board the TARDIS, with the Doctor at her bedside, his cool hands holding her left one.

"Hello" he said with a small smile.

Rose returned a tired smile of her own. "Hello, Doctor. How 've you been?"

"Oh, you know, same old. Jeopardy-friendly friend of mine just gave me another bit of a scare."

Rose let out a small chuckle. "She must be a terrible friend."

"Oh yes, you have no idea how terrible. The worries she's given me over the years, you wouldn't believe it."

"I just might. I've done quite a bit of fretting over a couple of guys I travelled with." The Time Lord raised his eyebrows. "You might've heard of 'em. Fellows calling themselves the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

Rose snorted. "Yeah, you're terrible too."

"I've been told that now and then." He dropped a kiss on the hand he was holding. "How are you feeling?"

"Eh, bit cold. Seem to have suffered a central heating failure." Her smile faded. "Korwin? Ashton?" The Doctor shook his head once, and Rose's expression grew sad. "Poor McDonnell. She'll be devastated. Are we still on…?"

"The cargo ship? Yes."

"How's everybody else?"

"They're all fine. Even the Ood." The Doctor let out a snort of laughter. "They've just been served refreshments by the Humans, if you'll believe that. Historic first. First Friends of the Ood."

"At least one good thing came out of this fiasco."

Barbara appeared at the door. The moment she noticed Rose was awake, she ran to the young woman and enfolded her in a tight hug.

"Oh, hello, there" Rose said, returning the hug as best she could manage with one arm.

"Hello" Ian's voice made from the infirmary's entrance. "Did you meet the wife?"

Which had the effect of making said wife glare at him. "Ian."

"No, it's alright" Rose said with a grin.

The Doctor let go of her hand and stood up, and clapped his own hands once. "So, where are we going next? I was thinking about a bit of ice skating on the mineral lakes of Kur-ha, anybody interested?"

Barbara shook her head, and Rose could feel her quiver. "We're sorry, Doctor, Rose."

"Those reasons we left you that first time, Doctor" Ian said from the door. "They're still valid."

The Doctor looked sadly at Ian and then at Barbara. "You wouldn't be traveling with me, but with Rose. She really could use some company right now."

Barbara snapped at him. "Then why don't you just stay and travel with her?"

"Because he can't" Rose answered quietly.

"Of course he can, he's right there."

"No, he isn't. Right now, at this point in my time stream, the Doctor is locked forever inside a parallel universe. The two of us being involved in a single paradox loop in the same universe despite him not existing in said universe at all is dangerous on a scale neither of you two could begin to imagine. The sooner the Doctor's done with his own part in it, the less risk for everyone."

A leaden silence fell in the infirmary. It was eventually broken by a quiet question from Barbara. "Doctor, all that Rose just said… is that true?"

The Doctor's eyes came to rest on Barbara. "I'm sorry. It's all true" he replied sadly.

Barbara's eyes now sought her husband. "Ian, we've got to stay, then."

"We do."

"You won't" Rose said quietly. "You don't actually want to."

She disentangled herself from Barbara, and with some effort, the young woman climbed down her infirmary bed and made for the door.

"What are you doing?" the man asked.

"Taking you home, and then taking the Doctor back to 1930. Time must go on."

* * *

The farewells between the two time travellers and the Chestertons were subdued. Both teachers insisted that at the very least, the Doctor and Rose should come and visit them regularly, but the Time Lord had refused, citing established events, and now that she was about to be on her own again, Rose didn't really want to. Besides, as she began to tell the Doctor while the two piloted the TARDIS back to 1930 New York, right now, there only really was one thing she wanted to do – something that clearly did not sit well with the Time Lord.

"Let me say that again" he said harshly as the TARDIS stopped, "you want to go back to the ship we just saved, reach for the Bad Wolf, and resurrect the three humans who died there."

"I don't really risk dying from it after how the Master transformed me, and resurrection is something I already did for Jack once, even if it got a bit out of hand" Rose replied, her voice full of steel. "But I would know what I'm doing now. I can control it. I can bring those three people back without damaging the fabric of reality. And there's a lot more people I can save that way too."

The Doctor's ire gave way to sadness. "It's not even been a year, and you're already gone down that low."

"Don't you dare lecture me on what I can't and can do" the young woman growled. "No matter his actual intentions, the Master's given me a huge gift, he's handed me great power. There's a lot of good I could do, a lot of people I could save, and it's taken far too long and far too many deaths already for me to understand it's time I started acting like a Goddess of Time and Space, and not just let people think I can be one and just take their hopes away and let them die."

The Doctor grunted. He fixed his stare on the young woman, and Rose returned a look glinting with gold. "You're not going to listen to anything I have to say on the subject, are you?"

"I'm not" Rose confirmed.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Then it's time I pass on the message I was told to give you."

"I doubt there's anything anyone could say that could change my mind about this, Doctor."

"I know there's someone" the Time Lord said, taking out a small, translucent crystal from one of his pockets. "Catch."

The Doctor threw the small item in Rose's direction, and the young woman caught it reflexively. The crystal warmed to her touch, and it activated, projecting a holographic version of Rose's own face, set with rich brown eyes and coiffed with gold. "I know what you're thinking right now" her own voice said to the surprised young woman. "I was once you. And look, I'm not saying that you're wrong about what you can or can't do, but before you commit fully to becoming the Bad Wolf, there's somewhere you must go."

"Why would I want to send myself anywhere in the future?" the young woman mumbled.

"You'll understand after it happened" the projection replied to her. "That ticket for a cruise on the space Titanic you've fished out of your pockets. Once the Doctor's left, it's time you go." The projection gave her a wan smile. "And don't let yourself lose all hope. Remember what River told you in the aborted timeline the Master created. Someday, the Doctor and you will be together, and this time, it will be for good."

The projection vanished, and the crystal crumbled into sparkling pale rose dust that slipped through the young woman's fingers and got lost into the TARDIS' grating, leaving behind a dumbfounded Rose and a Doctor who looked deep in thought.

Then the creases on his face gave way to a little smile. "I should really have guessed you'd know better, come to think of it."

"I'd say that was incredibly stupid" Rose replied dully. "I sent myself a message from my own future telling me precisely what happens in my own future."

"And until a couple of hours ago I'd have agreed with you." The Doctor grinned. "And it all stayed secret for years and years and years, until one day Clara slammed the door on us and you finally gave me the tiniest hint of just how much I'd have to do around past versions of you from back when I didn't even exist in your time stream."

Rose's reply was bitter. "Yeah, and I'm going to have to keep myself alive at any cost for years and years and years, until I finally get to close my end of a paradox loop that must go on for much longer than I've been alive right now."

"You can manage if it comes to that" the Doctor told her warmly, stepping towards the young woman. "You already did." He hesitated as he arrived right in front of her, and then enfolded Rose in an awkward hug. She buried her face in his chest, breathing his scent deep in.

"You must really pity me if this you is the one initiating one of those" the young woman mumbled.

"I don't pity you" the Doctor murmured back, and he dropped a kiss on the crown of Rose's head. "I love you. Have done since my tenth face, will do until the death of my last one."

"If I don't do something stupid at some point and none of it ever happens."

"I'm not saying that it will be a quick and easy road. In fact there will be many times it can all go wrong, but you can do this on your own, the whole part of your journey without me. I'm living proof there's a time stream where you succeed."

Rose snorted. "God-like powers and certain knowledge I should never die. Mum should have named me Mary Sue."

"And almost all of it unfixed. It wouldn't be the first time someone eventually remembers two different realities happening, if the second one of these even happens at all."

"Well, I've sort of just gone and put the entire weight of the reality I've already lived in on the shoulders of not-even-twenty-five-me."

"Now that I've actually had the time to study this version of you, I don't think you did."

Rose disengaged herself from the Doctor and held herself at a half-arm's length, holding onto his waist while he kept a grip on her shoulders; she looked deep into his eyes, her own expression and voice vulnerable.

"Doctor, what do you mean?"

"Do you remember what I told you would happen after you'd met regenerations of me from before I rescued you from your work in a shop?"

Rose nodded. "Yeah, they forgot most of what happened in connection with the times we were together."

"And I remembered it all the first time I met you again and our time streams were matching."

"I know. Another you explained it was because there's quite a bit of me that's really bits of you."

"Yes." The Doctor looked at Rose gravely. "And now the same thing is about to happen to you."

Rose stared at him. "All that's happened since I saw you in the Dalek laboratory under Manhattan, I'm going to forget all of it. I'm just going to find myself alone, not really remembering how you saved us, how we went off and rescued a spaceship after that, or why Ian and Barbara are no longer traveling with me."

"On the plus side, so will the sequence of events that led you into having such dangerous delusions of grandeur. It'll all go; you'll have just enough residual memory left for your subconscious to stop you from noticing part of your own time stream has gone missing, and all that happened at that time. That's why even a Time Lord with an absolutely perfect time sense can't accurately tell their own age until they've reached the very end of their time stream. There might always be some memories and events still missing, and so we never really know."

"And that's how reality compensates" Rose deduced. "Because we can't remember, events can still be changed and it doesn't cause a causality paradox. We've got no idea there'd been a later version of us that might never have existed by the time we catch up to their point in our time stream."

The Doctor chortled. "And she keeps telling people she's not a proper Time Lady. Even at such a young age, with no training and little experience, you already understand all of this. You've gone a very long way since that day I took you to your father."

Rose didn't share his good humour. She looked at him sadly. "And I'm going to have to forget all I've just guessed and have to keep going without that knowledge for quite a while longer, aren't I?"

The Doctor's smile turned sad again. "I'm sorry, but yes."

Rose raised her hands up to the Doctor's shoulders, disengaging his own hands in the process. "Well then… If this is it… No time like the present you can't remember."

Then she took hold of his head and pulled his face down to hers, surprising the Time Lord into a deep and prolonged kiss, which Rose kept going until she had to catch up her breath, shifting to rest her forehead and nose against a Time Lord version of a deer caught in headlights.

"I love you, Doctor" she breathed.

"Yeah." He swallowed. "I'd gotten that from the nonverbal language."

Rose let go of the Time Lord, and went for the console, beginning to program the trip she would believe would be a random one from the TARDIS. And slowly, hesitantly, the Doctor made his way to the door.

He was about to step outside when Rose's voice called after him.

"Doctor, since it might never happen and I'm not going to remember, how long have we been together?"

The Doctor turned, taking one last look at the young woman's back, one of her hands ready to pull the final lever.

"We've been together for eleven hundred years."

He stepped out and closed the door, and Rose sent the TARDIS into flight, never noticing the moment her memories were locked away from her.

"Alright, old girl. Let's see what your idea of what a nice and comforting place has been on this go."

Quietly, Rose stepped outside, finding herself in a spacious cabin on what had to be a cruising ship, elegantly decorated in deep wood themes, lined with gold, impressionist paintings and boasting a very appealing-looking bed. A replica of a life buoy identified the ship as the _Titanic_.

The young woman blinked, and fished inside her pocket for the ticket she'd mistakenly handed over to Ian and Barbara. "Is that actually my cabin?" Rose locked the TARDIS door and briefly stepped out into the thickly carpeted corridor, checking the gilded number on the heavy wooden panel against her ticket. "It is actually my cabin!"

Rose grinned. She shut the door and took a running jump towards the bed, flipping in the air so she'd land flat on her back onto what proved to be a highly comfy mattress. "Fantastic."

Then there was a high pitched whirring, and Rose jumped up into a sitting position, and spun herself so she'd face the opening door.

The protest she was about to make against the intruder died on her lips the moment she saw him properly. Of course, it had been years for her, and her sight and senses had become radically different from what they had been while she was human, but there was never going to be a way Rose would forget that face, that nose, those ears on that man in black shoes, black pants, a black leather jacket and a jumper, and she barely managed to suppress a squeal when she heard the familiar northern burr.

"Great rendition of the noise" the Doctor said with a manic grin as he stepped in, pulling the door shut behind him. "Oh, and will you look at that beauty of a copy!" he added, half-running to the TARDIS and gently running his hands on its blue panels. "You've even got the texture right."

The Doctor spun around, taking in the sight of a Rose grinning wider than she could ever remember having. "Nice of you to have kept your own haircut, hair and eye colour and underwear, with the replica of the TARDIS and rest of your clothes also being a near-perfect copy of mine, that's already the creepiest cosplay version of me I've ever seen."

"And hello to you too, Doctor" Rose said merrily, following up with a tongue-in-teeth grin. "I'd never have guessed I'd be meeting with you here."

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N:** Onwards to the Titanic and then into Season 4 we go!

 **ELinkA** , no, thank _you_!

 **Jus Drein Jus Daun-Clexa** , Rose wouldn't _actually_ slap Peter Capaldi into becoming Jodie Whittaker, would she?

 **Bad Wolf Jen** , funnily enough, I've just tackled the three episodes in Season 3 I like the least x) And I've actually got a timeline laid down all the way to Season 9. Just going to have to pick up the pace if I want to get there anytime before 2040…

 **TheDoctorMulder** , thanks! I'll readily admit Capaldi is my favourite New Who Doctor so far.

 **Owlqueen08** , thanks a lot for the kind words! As to BadWolf!Rose, I'm afraid she's there for the long haul xD

 **Nickystix99** , thanks a lot! And yes, I'm absolutely going to continue this story. Should be easier now my schedule has stopped being hellish!

See you around, folks! And if you've enjoyed this, please leave a review!

-LB


	7. VI - Voyage of the Damned

**A/N:** BBC, why didn't you offer me the rights to Doctor Who for my birthday? :(

* * *

Quietly, Rose stepped outside, finding herself in a spacious cabin on what had to be a cruising ship, elegantly decorated in deep wood themes, lined with gold, impressionist paintings and boasting a very appealing-looking bed. A replica of a life buoy identified the ship as the _Titanic_.

The young woman blinked, and fished inside her pocket for the ticket she'd mistakenly handed over to Ian and Barbara. "Is that actually my cabin?" Rose locked the TARDIS door and briefly stepped out into the thickly carpeted corridor, checking the gilded number on the heavy wooden panel against her ticket. "It is actually my cabin!"

Rose grinned. She shut the door and took a running jump towards the bed, flipping in the air so she'd land flat on her back onto what proved to be a highly comfy mattress. "Fantastic."

Then there was a high pitched whirring, and Rose jumped up into a sitting position, and spun herself so she'd face the opening door.

The protest she was about to make against the intruder died on her lips the moment she saw him properly. Of course, it had been years for her, and her sight and senses had become radically different from what they had been while she was human, but there was never going to be a way Rose would forget that face, that nose, those ears on that man in black shoes, black pants, a black leather jacket and a jumper, and she barely managed to suppress a squeal when she heard the familiar northern burr.

"Great rendition of the noise" the Doctor said with a manic grin as he stepped in, pulling the door shut behind him. "Oh, and will you look at that beauty of a copy!" he added, half-running to the TARDIS and gently running his hands on its blue panels. "You've even got the texture right."

The Doctor spun around, taking in the sight of a Rose grinning wider than she could ever remember having. "Nice of you to have kept your own haircut, hair and eye colour and underwear, with the replica of the TARDIS and rest of your clothes also being a near-perfect copy of mine, that's already the creepiest cosplay version of me I've ever seen."

"And hello to you too, Doctor" Rose said merrily, following up with a tongue-in-teeth grin. "I'd never have guessed I'd be meeting with you here."

"Yeah." The Doctor grinned back. "Who are you?"

Rose's grin slipped a bit. "We haven't met before?"

"Pretty clear you're one of my biggest fans."

"Right. So that's when you are."

"Yeah, and that leaves you literally speechless, doesn't it?"

Rose blinked. "I'm really not?"

"Tell you what, I'll give you a trick" the Doctor said at a very rapid clip. "Take a couple of very deep breaths, and then use your belly to push and give a big shout. Then you can repeat all you tried to say without actually managing to voice it."

Rose gave him a flat look. "I've been using my voice for every sentence and can hear myself perfectly fine."

"Oh, right, stupid me." The Doctor's grin slipped as Rose's smile returned – and disappeared again instantly: "you're actually mute, and you know I'm a lip reader."

Rose's foot started to tap on the bed. "Alright, really, Doctor, this is getting annoying, and yeah, I know this you really, really likes being rude."

The Time Lord's grin returned. "No, better explanation! I'm the one who doesn't have a voice, so you're imitating the way I talk." He stumbled and barely caught himself against the TARDIS. "Wait a minute, I'm the one who doesn't have a voice, that's new."

Something clicked in Rose's mind, and she couldn't help a snort. "Sorry, I know it's not that funny, but the Doctor not getting to enjoy the sound of his own voice almost sounds like poetic justice."

At the same time the Doctor's expression darkened. "Maybe it's a form of karma for what I've just done, not getting to hear myself talk anymore when it's something I rather enjoy." He took one of his hands off the TARDIS and waved it in front of his face, and almost toppled. "Hold on" he said weakly, "I could have seen that hand only fifteen seconds ago."

Rose pushed herself to the edge of the bed nearest to the Time Lord and stood up, a shocked expression on her face. "Doctor."

"Listen, if you still can hear my voice, I don't want you to misunderstand me going to lie down on your bed. You creep me out a bit, and I'd really rather nothing happened", and his knees buckled, "while I am unconscious…"

The Doctor dropped, but Rose had already closed the distance in a few quick steps, and caught him before he had time to crumple on the floor. The Time Lord was out like a light and oddly warm to the touch, and-

"You're a bit heavier than I remembered, Doctor" Rose said strenuously, "or maybe it's just you're dead weight right now."

She dragged him over to the bed and lay him down there, facing up.

"Okay…"

A plume of golden energy escaped from the Time Lord's mouth, and Rose's mouth fell open.

"… WHAT?"

* * *

 **Doctor Who – The Wandering Wolf**

 **VI. Voyage of the Damned**

* * *

One of the shortest descriptions one could made of Astrid Peth was "disenchanted Stoian waitress", and every shift she worked in the _Titanic_ 's main lounge made her regret her decision to apply a little more. The novelty of watching a different set of stars through the porthole of her small cabin had also quickly worn off, and now, those unknown stars had become yet another regret: Astrid had only found out after the _Titanic_ had left the spaceport that her employer hadn't been able to afford the costs of insurance to cover their personnel's shore leaves.

She was also discovering to her discomfiture that despite being almost exclusively made of members of the wealthiest classes on Sto, the clientele of the _Titanic_ were often just as rude with the waitresses as the ordinary space workers on shore leave at a station diner, and on top of that, many of them made a point of looking down on her, and sometimes even were openly aggressive, just like the particularly spiteful Stoian in a genuine Earth jacket who had just bumped into her.

"You'll be sorry when the cost comes off your wages, sweetheart" he sneered. "Staffed by idiots. No wonder Max Capricorn's going down the drain."

There was nothing for Astrid to do but lower her gaze and hope her tormentor wasn't irate enough to actually follow through right now, which – small mercy – he turned out not to be. Holding back a sigh, the waitress went down to collect as many shards from the broken glasses that had fallen from her tray as she could.

Astrid had not expected the woman in a completely out of place leather jacket who crouched opposite her and started picking up her own share of the glass. The waitress opened her mouth to protest, but the newcomer winked at her and cut her off.

"Faster with two, yeah?"

The waitress blushed a little. "Thank you, Madam, but you really don't need to help me with that."

Her helper grinned. "I like it when people call me Madam. Makes me feel mature. Don't you love feeling mature?"

Astrid couldn't help a sad little smile. "Whether we like it or not, we don't really have a choice, do we?"

"Of course we do" the other replied matter-of-factly, giving Astrid a long look from her pair of unsettling golden eyes. "Don't like being mature, me, not when I can help it. Tray."

Astrid extended it almost automatically, and she was surprised to notice her helper drop nearly all of the glass that had spread on the floor. Then the stranger fished out a cylindrical tool and flashed it over the stained carpeting, and the waitress watched with astonishment as the stains from the drink and the tiny shards embedded in the red fabric appeared to vanish.

"How are you doing that?" Astrid blurted out, and her helper grinned.

"Sonic screwdriver. Not sure why the Doctor ever felt the need to program the stain removal and the silicate de-structuring features, but they do save a girl quite a bit of cleaning."

This time, the waitress' smile was genuine. "You've certainly saved me a good few minutes, Madam…?"

"Just call me Rose, no need for the Madam thing" the other replied, pocketing her sonic screwdriver and almost jumping back up. "And you are?"

"Astrid, ma-" She blushed again and stood up with her glass-filled tray. "Astrid Peth."

"Lovely name, Astrid Peth." Another grin. "To be honest, I was being a bit selfish just now – need a cup of the strongest tea you can get me delivered in suite 1B."

Astrid stared at Rose. "You're one of the passengers that booked the Maxxed suite? They told us neither of you had boarded."

"Had to space-hop mid cruise. Long story, which I'd love to tell you later, but right now, I badly need that cup of tea. Or actually, any really strong infusion of free radicals and tannins would do, that's what my partner needs right now."

"We do have tea. One of our most expensive drinks, seeing as how they have to smuggle it from a level five planet, but if you can afford the Maxxed suite you'll probably think it's cheap."

Again, Rose surprised the waitress, this time with a blush of her own and awkward words. "Not sure I've got any currency you'd accept, actually. I'm from one of those level five planets you were talking about, not sure where this ship comes from. Would have made tea on my ship, but she's freaking out a little at the moment and I don't think I should push her."

"You've got a _living ship_ on board?" Astrid croaked, and Rose made a shushing mimic.

"Just don't pay too much attention to the blue wooden boxes with 'police' on them in my suite and wherever my partner's stumbled – his TARDIS is the one that's making my TARDIS freak out, and I should have seen it coming, really."

"TARDIS?"

"Time and relative dimension in space. Tell you what, Astrid Peth, I'll tell you all about it after I've gotten my partner back on his feet, and I really shouldn't be leaving him unattended longer than I have to. So now, can you make then bring that tea over ASAP?"

"I'll put it on the house" Astrid breathed, not certain this strange person named Rose had heard her, having already whirled around and began to stride out of the lounge.

* * *

The scalding sensation from the hot tea dripping down his throat woke the Doctor with a start. Fortunately, the woman who'd been making him drink the tea was ready and had already moved the cup out of the way, and she didn't miss a bit either when the Time Lord reached to swipe the tea off her hand and drink it hungrily, burning his throat but knowing it would heal almost instantly.

"How did you know tea was what-" He stopped mid-sentence, having looked up to take in the sight of the leather-clad, white-haired woman from earlier, and this time, he did recognize her, and with that recognition, the floodgates of memory opened.

"You followed me here" he said hoarsely and almost desperately. "Why did you follow me here?"

"Complete accident," Rose replied – her name was Rose, he now remembered, "I just happened to find a ticket for this suite loose in my pockets, so I figured I might as well check it out. Never expected to see you here."

"You don't- You aren't-"

"I didn't live through it with you, but I know exactly when this is for you" the young woman replied sadly. "I knew you'd remember meeting me, I know what regeneration is like, and I know what you just had to do. And I know it's not worth anything, Doctor", and her voice quivered, "but I'll say it anyway: I am so, so sorry you had to do this on your own. I would have done it with you in a heartbeat if I could."

The Time Lord was shaking now, the cruel irony of the situation forcing itself upon him. "You really think you know?" he said with anguish, and the young woman's voice shook with held back tears as she replied.

"I do, Doctor. Gallifrey or the universe. Nobody's ever had a harder choice to face, and you were so unbelievably brave to face it."

At this, the Doctor broke down. He barely noticed himself being cradled in the young woman's arms as he cried and lamented for his mother, his brother, his sisters, his granddaughter and her son, and all those other Gallifreyans he couldn't count right now but knew he would as soon as he possibly could, reading them from the last census he'd saved from Gallifrey before he'd made it burn.

He didn't know for how long he cried, but distantly, remotely, the Doctor registered that the young woman who was being his lifeline was shaking with what must be her own silent tears. And in a small corner of his fracturing mind, he knew that even if she wasn't the person who had been there with him for the terrible instant he'd activated the Moment and eradicated his people from existence, and even if he knew he'd be forgetting her once more once he and this young woman remade with parts of him parted ways once more, there was nobody in the universe he'd have picked over Rose Tyler to hold him as he let out all the pain from having burned everyone and everything he'd loved.

* * *

Some moments later (Rose's time sense would have allowed her to know the exact duration, but she really didn't care), the Time Lord, worn down from all the despair and anguish he'd been letting out, had fallen unconscious again, his still-regenerating body giving out once more on him, and Rose was able to gently let him back down on the Maxxed suite's bed and to clean up the traces of her own tears, and then drag a chair back to sit at his bedside.

"I think this now counts as the worst moment of my life" she murmured to herself, leaning over so she could come to rest on her jointed hands, her forearms propped up on the mattress. "And I really, really hope you don't have to go through this again after our shared genetics make you forget this go."

She sighed and went on with her train of thought, half-closed eyes trained on the bereaved Time Lord. _Or maybe you'll remember just enough on some subconscious level that when you meet the younger me you feel you really need to make me want to come with you? Did your brains leave you no other choice but to fall in love with the girl who's fluked into being the first person you met right after you've ended the Time War?_

The latter one was making Rose feel no small amount of guilt, and she nervously drummed on her chin with her fingertips. _Have I really been such a manipulative little egotist as Bad Wolf that I made sure you'd never even dream there could be another hand for you to hold than my own?_

"I know for certain from my past memories you'd never have done that for yourself" the Doctor's voice said weakly.

Rose looked at him again. The Time Lord's eyes were still closed, and his breathing was calm and shallow as he lay still on the bed.

"Doctor?"

"I can hear what you're thinking. Never heard anything so clearly in my head. It's empty, now, they're all gone. You're the only one who's there."

"I know" Rose replied quietly. "I met an earlier you who told me I couldn't control myself, that I was projecting a lot of mental screaming. I wish he or that other you had told me how to block it."

"I'm glad he didn't. Even it's only scrambled feelings from a sad and broken kid in pain, at least there's someone. Better than immediately having to adjust to there being no one at all."

Rose was chewing on her lips. "I'm from your future. I've seen lots of pictures of this you, and this version of me was never with you. I can't stay with you for long, and when we part you're going to forget all about me. You won't remember I was ever in your head. You'll only know being alone."

The Doctor clenched his fists. His eyes were tightly closed. "I should be alone. I deserve to be alone. I've just killed every single Time Lord who might have had a chance of surviving the Time War. I didn't give any of them a chance, not even my own flesh and blood. I turned against every principle that made me the Doctor."

"You didn't have a choice" Rose countered as she reached for the Doctor's closest fist, wrapping her hands around it. "I know what your High Council were trying to do. I know about the Final Sanction. I've got that memory. You had to do this, and you couldn't take the chance anything or anyone might break the time lock from outside, even if it was only to save one of their loved ones." She squeezed on the Time Lord's hand. "And I know you, Doctor. I know you both from your past and from your future. You always give them a chance in the end. You're a better person than I am. You're rude and not ginger, but you're the best person there is, and the best person there ever will be."

An incredulous expression formed on the Doctor's face. "You actually believe it."

"I know it." Rose smiled. "Years of first-hand experience."

The Doctor had a little scoff. "You really are still a kid, aren't you?" The young woman squeezed his hand, but she didn't say anything, and the Doctor sighed. "I know you're far from clueless" he said. "And apparently you already know about regeneration, and I'm still early into this one. Is this place safe? Or should I get back on my TARDIS right now?"

"I think she's too busy mourning too." Rose had a small, strangled laugh. "In fact I think she's busy consoling herself – my version of her won't let me in, and she's shutting me out mentally."

"Figures. Got a few hours to kill, then. Might as well spend them with you, less risky fresh off regeneration." The Doctor opened his eyes. "Where are we, then? Space liner of some sort?"

Rose looked in the direction of the replica buoy with the ship's name, and the Doctor followed her eyes. He grimaced. "Fantastic. What year is this?"

"Christmas Eve, 2008 in Earth years."

"Could have been a worse day."

Rose snorted. "I don't want to jinx us, Doctor, but I haven't had a single normal Christmas since we first travelled together, no matter the year or place – and I don't just mean the day, even worked for a town named Christmas. They'd once endured a siege for six hundred years, and a battalion of Cybermen stayed behind, buried themselves and put themselves in power-saving mode. Guess who the one who accidentally dug them up is?"

"Bloody fantastic." The Doctor grimaced. "That one didn't sound quite right. It's probably the new teeth. Rather like having a full set, I've been missing that." He sat up suddenly. "Do you mind if we get a drink? First fifteen hours of regeneration allow quite a bit of self-mending, but they don't regrow lost fluids."

"Could do with one myself" Rose admitted. "Plus I should really talk to Astrid."

"Companion?"

"Waitress." Rose smiled. "Owe her one for the free tea, it's supposed to cost an arm and a leg."

"I could probably spare those if you're quick enough."

"I'm already partly built out of one of your spare hands, don't need other pieces, and don't want a DIY Doctor kit on my TARDIS, so keep your limbs, will you? If we really need a trick to get the drinks, we've both got psychic paper."

"Spoilsport."

The Doctor got up and took an unexpectedly steady walk to the door. He opened it and held it for Rose. "Shall we?"

"Sure."

The young woman exited the cabin, the Doctor following in her wake. Or he would have had he not missed the opening and walked face-first into the door jamb, forcing Rose to hold her laughter.

"I can hear you in there" the Doctor glowered, and Rose returned a grin.

"Points for trying, though. How about a bit of gender equalization? You held the door for me, I hold out my arm to support you."

"Pretending to be a gentlewoman, are we?"

That one got a tongue-in-teeth grin. "Not pretending. Dame Rose of the Powell Estate, at your service."

"Spiffing fantastic." Another grimace. "Didn't sound right either."

"You'll figure it out. Shall we?"

"Don't start."

* * *

The lounge was quite a bit fuller than earlier, and Rose quickly went from looking around for an empty table to searching for empty seats. She spotted a few at a table heavily laden with various assortments of food, at which were seated a couple of thickset people whose purplish-blue fancy garb looked even more out of place than hers among an Edwardian-dressed crowd.

"Just ignore them" the man muttered to the woman as the two time travellers reached the table.

The Doctor grinned maniacally. "And she says I'm rude" he said gleefully, earning himself a glare from the seated man.

"We're already getting enough of that from the table over there" the man grumbled, pointing behind his back with his thumb.

Rose looked in that direction, and grinned mischievously. "Do you know what I'm thinking?"

"Tell me you're not going to" the Doctor replied flatly.

"But they'd really like some champagne, and like you said, you know me, I'm a kid who likes to be helpful."

She drew her sonic screwdriver and pointed in the direction of the magnum stood in a bucket on the table of the people the thickset man had pointed at and quickly activated it, its sound drowned by the shrieks as the cork burst out and the three bullies found themselves showered in champagne.

"Super-duper fantastic. No, I sound like an idiot."

"Did you do that?" the seated woman asked Rose.

"The champagne was feeling lonely."

The woman laughed. "I like you."

"So do I" added her companion. "Sorry for earlier" he added for the Doctor, "they've been heckling us for over an hour. I'm Morvin Van Hoff, and this is my good woman, Foon."

"I'm Rose Tyler."

"And I'm the Doctor."

"Oh!" The woman sighed. "That's lucky. I think I'm going to need a Doctor, time I've finished with that buffet." She held out a plate. "Have a buffalo wing. They must be enormous, these buffalos. So many wings."

"Land ones weigh over a ton" the Doctor supplied. "Not sure there's winged ones."

"Well, obviously there must be" Foon said.

Any further repartee was lost as a steward called for attention. "Attention please" he called, "shore leave tickets Red Six Seven activated. Red Six Seven."

"Red Six Seven" Foon repeated. "That's us. Are you Red Six Seven?"

"Might as well be" Rose said.

"Rose, I'm not-"

The young woman cut the Doctor off. "You're coming along, and I'm not taking 'no' for an answer. Not today."

Rose got up and walked in the steward's direction, followed by Foon, while the woman's husband and the Doctor exchanged looks.

"Whipped by the wife too?" Morvin asked with a grin.

"Not married."

"Even more whipped, then."

"I don't do domestics."

The two men went to join the women in front of a small podium, at the foot of which an elderly-looking man in tweed was holding a sign up with the mention 'Red 6-7'. "This way, fast as you can" he called out.

"What are you looking for?" the Doctor asked Rose, following her searching gaze.

"That Astrid I told you earlier."

"Leggy waitress? Blonde?"

"Bit coarse, but yes."

"She's over there", and the Time Lord nodded in her direction.

Rose snorted. "Faster than me at spotting something in this body, there's a change. Stay with these two, I'll get her as a plus one."

She went over to Astrid, closing the distance in a few quick strides.

"Can I do something for you, Madam?"

"I told you, it's Rose", and the white-haired woman grinned. "We're going down. Fancy coming with?"

"I'll get the sack" Astrid squeaked, but Rose caught hold of the waitress' arm and began to pull her towards the line.

"They won't after I've given them a piece of my mind. Come along, Astrid."

The two women got back to the man in tweed, and a quick presentation of Rose's psychic paper convinced him to hand out two teleport bracelets. Then they joined with the Doctor and the Van Hoffs, just in time to hear the elderly man's spiel about the upcoming trip.

"To repeat" the man said, "I am Mister Copper, the ship's historian, and I shall be taking you to Old London in the country of UK, ruled over by good King Wenceslas."

"God shaved the King?" Rose muttered, and the Doctor rolled his eyes at her as Mister Cooper went on.

"Now, human beings look like us Stoians from the outside, but their culture is a bit more primitive. They worship the great god Santa in the country of UK, a creature with fearsome claws, and they also pay homage to his wife Mary."

"Has she got claws too?"

This time, the man had heard Rose, and he looked a bit hesitantly at her. "That's a subject of debate among scholars." He returned his attention to the whole group. "Now it's Christmas Eve, a particular time of the year, and it's the time the people of UK go to war with the country of Turkey. Then they eat the Turkey people for Christmas dinner like savages."

"Which scholars did you learn all this from?" Rose prompted, feigning to be serious.

"From a prestigious university. I have a first class degree in Earthonomics. Now everybody stand by."

A little alien ran up to the group. "And me! And me!" it said excitedly. "Red Six Seven!"

The Doctor and Rose exchanged looks. "Think the savages of London will notice a Zocci zooming along the streets?" the Doctor said, and Rose played along.

"Well, they're a bit primitive, and those streets are going to be packed with shoppers and parties, and-"

The young woman stopped mid-sentence, noticing they were now standing in the middle of an empty shopping street.

"Well, that's new" the Doctor said.

"I told you I hate Christmas" Rose groused. "Guess this year's festivities start with investigating why the empty streets. Hopefully whoever's behind it this time didn't think sewers beat the roofs, I've done enough spelunking lately."

Mister Copper was calling for attention again, waving a piece of plastic. "Now, spending money" he said. "I have a credit card in Earth currency if you want to buy trinkets, or stockings, or the local delicacy, which is known as beef. But don't stray too far, it could be dangerous. In four or five hours they start boxing for a whole day."

"I'd love to see that" Astrid said from beside Rose. "This is beautiful!"

"No snow on Sto?"

"I've only gotten to see some from high orbit."

"Rose" the Doctor called, "if she wants beautiful, how about we nip to the pyramids or New Zealand?"

"But you don't get it, Sir…"

"Doctor."

"Doctor. I'm standing on an alien planet, in an alien street, with lots of concrete and real alien shops, no stars in the sky, and it smells. It stinks!" She pirouetted with glee, and went to hug Rose tightly. "This is amazing! Thank you so much!"

"Er, you're welcome?" the white-haired woman replied with a hint of surprise. "Anyway, I'd like to peek around the streets, find out why they're empty. Fancy a stroll?"

"On an alien planet? Absolutely!"

Astrid squealed and swarmed into Rose's arm, catching the other woman completely off guard. Then she pulled away and dragged the time traveller by her wrist, leaving behind a baffled Doctor, an indulgently smiling Foon and a laughing Morvin. "I think someone fancies your girlfriend, mate."

"Not my girlfriend, and not your mate" the Doctor grumbled, and he walked after Astrid and Rose.

He didn't have to go far; the two women had stopped in front of an open newspapers booth manned by an old man with a red cap who looked at least fifteen years past the age of retirement. Rose had already engaged him in conversation.

"Evening, Sir" she said pleasantly. "Sorry, bit of a silly question – where's everybody gone?"

The old man gave a hearty chuckle. "Oh ho, scared!"

The Doctor couldn't help butting in. "Scared of what?"

"Where have you been living, lad?" the old man said with surprise. "London at Christmas? Not safe, is it?"

"Why?"

"Well, it's them, up above. Look, Christmas before last, we had that big bloody spaceship, everyone standing on a roof. And then last year, that Christmas Star electrocuting all over the place, draining the Thames."

"The Thames bit wasn't the Christmas Star, that was me" Rose mumbled, and the old man squinted.

"Hold on, knew I'd seen your face somewhere. You're that girl that showed up with Donna at her wedding reception, and again after the funeral."

Rose's face lit up. "Donna, as in Donna Noble?"

The old man smiled. "She's my granddaughter. I'm Wilfred Mott."

"Great to meet you, Wilfred Mott" Rose said with a huge grin, detaching herself from Astrid to reach out and shake his hand. "How's Donna?"

"Well, you know, copin'" the old man said with a grimace. "Went off to China – that was quite the row with my daughter, but really, they needed a bit of space between them. When Geoff went, one lost a husband and the other a father, and they both think they have it worse. Better they don't fight over it."

"Can't argue with that" Rose let trail. She turned to the Doctor and Astrid. "Sorry, getting you involved in my domestics, that's not what either of you are here for."

The Doctor did look uncomfortable. Astrid, on the other hand, was delighted. "You're from this planet!"

"You're not?" Wilfred said with surprise.

"Neither she nor I" the Doctor said with a tight grin. "Is that alright?"

The old man smiled fondly. "Well, if you're friends with Rose here, then yes, it's alright. Doesn't matter that you're aliens, you must be two of the good ones."

The Doctor returned a pained grimace. "I'm really not."

"That's nonsense, lad" Wilfred said gruffly.

"You're only saying that because you don't know what I've done."

"But Miss Tyler knows, doesn't she? And she's still here, isn't she?"

"I am" Rose confirmed, and she walked over to the Doctor and lay her hands on his leather-clad shoulders. "And right now, I'm not going anywhere."

She was; at that precise moment, the teleport bracelets activated, and the wandering trio found themselves back on the _Titanic_ with the rest of their group.

"When I said 'right now', I didn't mean 'but I'll actually be teleporting in a couple of seconds'" Rose groused.

"Something's gone wrong" the Doctor said matter-of-factly, disengaging himself from Rose and looking around. "Oi, steward! Why did you bring us back on board?"

"I'm sorry, Sir." The steward raised his voice. "Apologies, ladies and gentlemen, and Bannakaffalatta, we seem to have suffered a slight power fluctuation. We invite you to hand your bracelets back to Mister Copper and return to the festivities. And as an apology on behalf of Max Capricorn Cruiseliners, free drinks will be provided."

"Fat lot of good that's going to do" the Doctor grumbled. "Rose?"

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Want to help me investigate?"

"Love to. _Allons-y!_ "

Astrid, however, was in Rose's way. "Sorry, I'll return to my shift. I just wanted to say…" She hugged Rose tightly again. "Thank you. That was the best. The best!"

"You're welcome" Rose said, and she nodded in the Doctor's direction. "Need to go."

"Tell me if you need anything."

Astrid let go of Rose, and the pair of time travellers made their way back to the reception lounge, stealing towards the least crowded side and walking over to a talking advertising portrait of the Max Capricorn they'd just heard being mentioned. The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver, and Rose was surprised to see the exact same red light flashing from it as did from hers.

"Didn't see that one coming." Then she frowned as the display changed from Max Capricorn's aged, bald, gold-toothed face to a summary of the ship's status. A glaring mauve warning informed her that the particle shields were offline. "Doctor."

"I know."

"Think we can access the sensors?"

Another whirring of the Doctor's screwdriver, and the status display was replaced by a three dimensional projection clearly showing incoming meteorites.

Rose sighed. "I hate Christmas."

"I think I can relate" the Doctor said moodily.

"Let's raise the command crew." Rose drew her own sonic screwdriver and waved it over the projection, replacing it with a view of the bridge, complete with view of a distinguished old officer and a far younger midshipman. "Captain" she ventured, "sorry for the interruption, but you've got a meteorite storm coming in, direction-"

"West zero by north two" the Doctor filled in.

The Captain just frowned. "Who is this?"

"He's the Doctor, I'm the Bad Wolf, and it's not important that we aren't crew – Captain, you haven't just got that storm coming, your shields are down. You've only got a few minutes to get them back up or change course."

"You have no authorization to contact us" the Captain replied in an aloof manner. "You will clear the comms at once."

"Yeah, we'll do that, just take a look to starboard if you don't believe us, and then do your goddamned job before somebody gets killed."

"Madam, Sir, you need to come with me" a steward said from behind Rose, and she spun around – and for the first time, she paid attention to the gilded angel statues in plain white robes that were ubiquitous on board: a pair of them were flanking the steward, both holding cuffs.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"I'd rather not need to have those put on you" the steward said sternly, "and I won't have to if you come quietly."

"Ruddy fantastic" the Doctor growled. "Barely four hours in, already getting myself arrested. And it _still_ sounds wrong."

"You're overcomplicating things" Rose groused, bringing the full weight of her golden glare on the steward. "Take us away if you must, but first get your crew and customers to clear off the starboard side, that's where the danger is if your shields don't go back online."

"That's none of your business, Madam" the steward said stiffly.

The Doctor brought his own glare to bear on the man. "Excuse me, there's a meteor shower about to wreck this ship and kill your passengers, and it's none of our business?"

"The situation is under control. Now, come!"

Rose had other ideas – she darted around the golden statue nearest to her, ducking under its arm and headed for the middle of the lounge, high-pitched voice clarioning.

"Everybody, listen to me, get to the life- Mfff!"

She'd run into another of the golden statues which had muffled her. The young woman tried to fight against its grip, a vain effort made hopeless when yet another statue grabbed her from behind and the two robotic angels dragged her out of the lounge, the other two and the steward pushing the Doctor after her.

They didn't leave alone. Pell-mell, Astrid, Morvin, Foon and the Zocci named Bannakaffalatta followed, either vouching for the pair of time travellers or offering excuses, or, for Morvin, protesting that all the teleports had gone down. Then the rude businessman in the Edwardian jacket from earlier showed up, angrily shouting at the steward.

"Did you incompetents even notice your shielding is down? A small meteorite just nearly burned my shoes!"

"Look, ladies and gentleman" the steward began hotly, "everybody needs to calm-"

"Information. You are all going to die" the angelic statue nearest to the steward cut him off, and it proceeded to grab hold of the man, locking his arms behind his back.

The Doctor sprang into action, whipping out his sonic screwdriver and circling around both steward and statue, applying the device on the robotic angel's neck and causing it to short circuit.

"Doctor!"

He ducked just in time to avoid the heavy swing of a golden fist – but it was enough to make him lose balance and nearly crumple forward. The sonic slipped out of his hand and rolled on the corridor floor – until a golden foot fell down on the device and smashed it.

"Now that's unfair!"

He rolled on the floor to get out of the trajectory of that statue, eyes falling upon Morvin in the process; the thickset man was doing his hardest to hold back the second of the three angelic hosts still active, while a little further Rose was manoeuvring around the third one, one of her wrists still locked in its grip, the other held back until she could swing around and press her own screwdriver on the statue's neck, deactivating it.

It was the moment Mister Copper chose to walk in on the scene. "What in Vot's name is going on here?"

"Everybody get down!"

That was Astrid, and just in the nick of time; the living participants in the fight barely had time to flatten themselves on the corridor floor when a brutal impact shook the ship, followed by a second and then a third one that shorted out the gravity temporarily, and the entire party were flung towards the far side of the corridor from the lounge; the two angel statues left active, which had already picked up considerable momentum, outright smashed into the wall.

Then gravity reasserted itself, sending everyone back on the floor, and the ship seemed to stabilize.

Rose was the first to push herself. "SS Titanic. Lousy name for a ship" she groused, going to help the closest person to her, who turned out to be Astrid. "You alright?"

"I think so" the waitress said weakly. "Madam, your partner."

The Doctor was crumpled on the corridor floor, unmoving, Foon hyperventilating as she tried to rouse him.

"He put himself between the wall and me."

"He does that" Rose said between her teeth, approaching to kneel at the Time Lord's side and gingerly scan him with her sonic, grimacing as she discovered the results.

"I'll get someone from the infirmary" the steward said, making his way to a hatch.

Rose barely had the time to yell a "Don't open it!" that the man did just that – and got sucked into open space before the oxygen shields had time to compensate, the scream of escaping air fading to a hiss.

"Rose" the Doctor gasped from where he lay. "Rose."

"Sorry, Doctor, you're going to be out of commission, too much internal damage" the young woman said grimly. "Still, you're from before my time, means your version of the old girl hasn't been tampered with, and she'll answer my call. I'll bring them and you down and then come back to get things sorted here."

"You, a little nobody who can't even afford a proper dress?" the businessman said snidely.

"Me, the Bad Wolf" Rose said coldly as she stood up. Her eyes flared, and the familiar whirring of the TARDIS echoed in the corridor as her familiar control room materialized around the astonished passengers, including a gobsmacked businessman.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling my ship" Rose answered. "Well, technically, his ship, she's the version from before he gets lost to a parallel universe."

"What?"

"Stop gaping and make yourself useful – help Astrid, you two grab hold of the Doctor, hang onto something, and don't let him go. Everybody else, just hold onto something that isn't the controls, this is going to get bumpy."

Rose went about the TARDIS' controls, ignoring the various questions and protests, and launched the ship into a trip that definitely was on the rough side and landed them back in the almost deserted street, right next to a gobsmacked Wilfred Mott's newspaper stall.

"Twice in the same night?" he choked out as Rose stepped outside, followed by the rest of her party, minus the Doctor of course.

"Sorry, bit of an emergency up above" the young woman replied in a rush. "Can I ask you for a favour?"

"There's no need" a clear woman's voice made from the other side of the TARDIS. Around stepped a small, mousey woman dressed entirely in long black robes, head and neck wrapped in a shawl, flanked by two policemen whose skin texture looked entirely too smooth to Rose's enhanced senses to feel natural.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Mayor Me, from Trap Street" the woman introduced herself, her voice crisp and business-like. "We detected the malfunctioning teleports earlier and came to investigate. I didn't know the Bad Wolf was already on the scene."

"Well, seeing as you already know me, might as well skip to the part where you tell me what you've found out."

"That there's a spaceship on a collision course with Earth, headed for an impact with Buckingham Palace."

"Oh my Lord" Wilfred made from inside his booth. "They got it right, all those people who said to stay hidden tonight."

"They didn't" Rose said harshly, "not if I have anything to say about it."

"You're also about to cause a riot" the woman in black said calmly. "Most of the aliens you brought here would fit in, but not a Zocci."

"Bannakaffalatta!" the little red alien protested.

"Bannakaffalatta" the woman repeated, and she returned her attention to Rose. "I can take charge of them. We have a refuge here in London."

"I refuse" the businessman said flatly. "I demand to be transported back to Sto as soon as possible. I can pay – handsomely."

"Can we be taken home too?" Morvin asked hesitantly, and the businessman rounded angrily on him.

"You're not my problem, the rest of you can find ways to pay for your passage for yourselves."

"I'm certainly not making _them_ pay for a trip back to Sto" Rose said snidely, and she turned her attention back to Mayor Me. "Can you take them off the streets while I get the _Titanic_ sorted? Just tell me where to collect them."

The mousey woman shook her head. "That will not be possible. Trap Street exists only for refugees, it's not accessible for anybody else. Not even you."

"Fantastic" Rose said sarcastically. "Are _you_ going to offer them passage back home?"

"I can't guarantee that. But you have my personal promise I will do all I can so they get a fair chance of securing their passage back home."

"Best they're going to get, I suppose" Rose said, and she turned back to the refugees she'd brought with her, looking at each of them in turn. "Well then… Foon… Morvin… Bannakaffalatta… Mister Copper… Rich Snob (Hey!)… Astrid. It was nice meeting you all."

"I'm staying with you" Astrid replied, her voice quiet but her expression resolute. "You'll need someone with you who knows the ship."

Rose looked at her. "Are you certain? It's going to be very dangerous – possibly deadly. I can't guarantee your safety up there."

"You can't guarantee yours, and you're still going, Madam" the waitress said. Rose winced, and Astrid smiled apologetically. "You shouldn't go alone, and I can help, so I'm helping."

Rose hesitated for an instant, looking at the young woman from Sto. Then she nodded. "Alright."

"Bad Wolf" the Mayor said calmly, calling Rose's attention back to her. "We're going. I'll let you retcon the human's memory."

"What? No way!" Wilfred protested from his booth.

"Not doing it" Rose said harshly. "Humans have known about aliens since the Slitheen, and apparently you're convinced your refuge is hidden so well not even I can find it. He's not going to."

"He could speak to the wrong people."

"If you can hide from a TARDIS, they can't find you either" Rose said with a note of finality. "You clearly recognize my authority; I've told you my decision."

"I will respect it as long as it doesn't endanger Trap Street." The Mayor turned to the refugees. "Let's go." She swept off, the five refugees and the two off-feeling policemen following her, leaving Rose and Astrid alone with Wilfred.

"Thank you" the old man said.

"You're welcome" Rose replied, and she turned back to Astrid. "Still got that teleport bracelet?"

"I didn't have a chance to return it" Astrid said with a blush.

"Keep it on hand, but don't put it back on" Rose instructed her. "I need a few minutes inside the TARDIS, got to send the Doctor back on his way. I'll be right back."

She swept back inside the ship, leaving behind a bewildered Wilfred and a chilled Astrid.

"I'm getting a bit old, but did I see things right? Is that box bigger on the inside?"

Astrid grinned at him, her teeth chittering. "It's bigger on the inside."

"Gracious me." He suddenly moved to the side, opening a door to the booth. "You're going to catch a cold out there. Come in, I've got a heater. Not ideal, but it's better than nothing."

They passed the next several minutes in companionable light conversation, the waitress and the old man exchanging on what their respective lives were like, both marvelling at the other's experiences. Then Rose exited the TARDIS again, and the time and space ship activated and vanished behind her.

"He's on his way" Rose said, her face closed. "It's going to be hard for him, being all on his own, but he's going to be alright in the end. He'll have me."

"Doesn't make too much sense" the old man pointed out.

"Time travel rarely does."

Wilfred seemed to take that one in stride. "You two will be off, then" he said.

"Got to."

The old man smiled. "Tell you what. When you're done, you come back here. We weren't going to celebrate Christmas, what with Geoff just gone, Donna in China, and Sylvia and me alone, but we can have ourselves a bit of eggnog, you and me, and we'll call Donna. Should be morning in China by then, she'll be delighted."

Rose smiled back. "Sounds like a great idea, Wilfred."

"Oh, just Wilf."

"Wilf the Just sounds a bit immodest."

The old man laughed, and turned to Astrid. "Your ride's here, Miss. It was great meeting you. My first proper chat with an alien, and it was wonderful."

"Can I come back too later on?" Astrid asked hopefully, and the old man chuckled. "Course you can, if that Mayor of alien Diagon Alley lets you."

Rose blinked. "You've read Harry Potter?"

"Course I did" Wilf said gruffly. "Just because I'm eighty doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good story. Great ending, too, what with-"

"Don't spoil me" Rose cut him off. "The Doctor kept saying I shouldn't peek at my own future, so I never read book seven while I was with him, and never got the chance after that."

"I'll fetch it for you" Wilf said. "Now, off you pop – ship crashing, Buckingham palace?"

Rose returned a tongue-in-teeth grin. "Donna comes by it honestly. Wish I'd met you when you were younger. Astrid?"

The waitress exited the booth, and followed Rose's example in putting the teleport bracelet back on. The time traveller took her sonic screwdriver out and tampered with both bracelets.

"Right, should take us back to the corridor where we were. Know more than one route to the bridge from there?"

"I do" Astrid replied, worrying her lip. "But how are we going to know which routes are safe?"

"Still plenty of electronics working on board, I'll run checks." Rose pocketed her sonic. "Alright. Ready, Astrid?"

"No?" the waitress replied with a weak smile. "Let's go anyway."

The two women rematerialized in the corridor near the reception lounge, and Rose immediately made off for the closest information panel, whipping her sonic screwdriver out again.

"Bridge… Bridge… Bridge…" she muttered, her tool whirring. "Ah, here we go! Bridge, this is deck, er…"

"Twenty-two" Astrid supplied. "Bridge, is the Captain here?"

"This is the bridge" a pained male voice made. "The Captain's dead."

"Brilliant" Rose said tartly. "How many people left on the bridge, and what d'you got access to?"

"Not much. There's an override protocol that's locked the steering." The man hissed, and Rose frowned.

"Are you injured?"

"Not badly. I tried, I did try to stop it, but I was too late."

"Captain did it, right?" Rose said, and Astrid looked at her with surprise.

"It was deliberate" the man confirmed.

"Thanks for stopping him, then" Rose said. "What's your name?"

"Midshipman Frame."

"Nice meeting you, Midshipman Frame. I'm the Bad Wolf. What type of engines do you have on this ship?"

A strangled noise came through the comms. "You're the Bad Wolf?"

"Not that Bad Wolf" Astrid said, raising her voice. "Her real name's Rose Tyler."

"Also the Bad Wolf" Rose groused. "How about those engines?"

"Nuclear storm, Madam."

Rose groaned. "Oh, not you too. Status?"

"They're cycling down."

"Brilliant. Nuclear storm engines, they have containment fields, don't they?"

"Got to, plasma containment."

"But now the engines are cycling down, takes less energy to keep the containment holding, doesn't it?"

There was a moment of silence, then: "Are you insane?"

"Yes" Rose said. "I've also got a knack for improvising in a pinch. Not looking for a permanent fix here, Midshipman Frame, just need enough time to get to the bridge and help fix the steerage. About twelve million sentients and the financial heart of the biggest market of a level five planet on the line, got to do something about that."

"Us blowing the ship in orbit certainly would save them" the midshipman said, hissing.

"Yeah, not keen on that until we've saved all the people we can on board – got contacts down below that can take charge of survivors. How many?"

"A couple hundred, and dropping. The Host have turned on everyone, crew and passengers. I've had to lock myself inside the Bridge."

"The Host?"

"The angel statues that normally help the passengers. They've gone on a killer rampage."

"And who controls the Host?"

"Highest authority on board. No idea who that is, since it wasn't the Captain, but that's certainly not me."

"We'll see about that. Bad Wolf, over and out."

This left Rose alone again with Astrid.

"Are you actually called the Bad Wolf?" the waitress asked hopefully.

"Oh yes – nifty little name I gave myself, and spread it across all of time and space, 'cause I'm narcissistic that way."

"Well, you don't look like a Goddess – not that I think you're ugly, far from it" Astrid added with a blush. "I just mean, you do act a bit weird at times, but it feels like you are one of us, not like you're a Goddess."

"Not a Goddess, me, just a freak" Rose mumbled. "Come on, we've wasted enough time already."

Being of relatively small size was a boon for both women, making it easier to make their way through the debris and across the weakened sections. It was still rough going, and it gave Rose a bit of time to think.

"Say, those Host things, Midshipman Frame said they obeyed the highest authority on board" she inquired, at the same time she was pulling Astrid atop a teetering pile of metal.

"They do" Astrid breathed out; the young woman clearly wasn't as used to this type of exertion as Rose had become. "Why did you want to know?"

"Because I'd like to know if there's some kind of central command node somewhere."

"Not really" Astrid said as she reached the top, panting. "Sorry."

"No worries. We can use that panel as a slide, go first. I'll be right behind you."

Astrid went and Rose followed; once both women had gone down, the time traveller made for the next control panel she could reach. "Where are the Hosts stored and maintained?"

"Deck thirty-one?"

"Deck thirty-one…" Rose chewed on her lips as she used her sonic again, returning a failed scan. "Will you look at that… These things give info about even sections that have been entirely destroyed by the meteors, but nothing for deck thirty-one. Whole level is shielded from scans."

"What does that mean?" Astrid asked, and Rose frowned.

"I'd love to know. Let's see – ah. Midshipman Frame, Bad Wolf, do you copy?"

"I do" the man's voice said tensely. "Engines are holding, but you've got to hurry. The Hosts are sweeping through and killing everyone they find. Can't be long before you run into them."

"I was thinking of taking a shortcut, actually" Rose said. "Those teleport bracelets, would they work for in-ship jumps or do they have a minimum range?"

"You have teleport bracelets?" the midshipman said with bafflement.

"We do?"

"Why didn't you say so in the first place? We could have saved ten minutes and got you here already!"

"Yeah, well, I didn't activate my Goddess mode" Rose groused. "Next question, can the Hosts teleport about?"

"No, physical travel only, but they can fly, and there's shortcuts so they can travel faster between decks."

"Wonderful. Last question: does teleportation work to deck thirty-one?"

There was a silence, both from comms and from a horrified-looking Astrid.

"You can't" the waitress whispered at the same time as the midshipman uttered a "you're insane."

"Got to get there somehow" Rose replied. "So I guess this is where I'll be leaving you, Astrid. I'll teleport you to the bridge and get myself down to deck thirty-one, see if that's where the answer to all this lies, and it's got to be."

"What if the Hosts try to stop you?" Astrid asked with evident worry.

Rose smiled at her self-deprecatingly. "Oh, you know, the usual. Have some fun, run for my life."

"You make it sound like you do this kind of thing all the time."

"Kinda-sorta."

"But your planet is down there. Don't you have a family there? Or friends?"

Rose's smile turned sad. "No family left, me. Only got the four friends – maybe five, with Wilf, or six, with you – and none of them have known me for more than a few weeks. All I really am is just a traveller."

"With that Doctor we helped earlier?"

"I can't be with him." Rose shook her head as Astrid was about to speak. "Long story, ask me again later."

"So you're on your own."

"Yeah."

"Because I was thinking, if you're this lonely, you need someone to take care of you. And me, I'm going to have nothing left after this. No work, no family waiting on Sto – just me. So what do you think? Can I come with you?" Astrid asked hopefully.

Rose chewed on her lip. "It's dangerous, lots of days like this one."

"And you're sending me away from my own protection, so I know you'd be caring for me. Please?"

Rose sighed. "Well, she's not wrong. Maybe it's time I really got a companion of my own" she murmured, and then she raised her voice again. "Alright, then. When this is over, you can come with me."

The waitress' face broke into a wide grin. "Thank you."

"For now, hold over your arm, got to send you on your way."

"Hold on" Astrid said with a blush, "first, there's an old tradition on Planet Sto."

"Is it a long tradition?"

"It won't take a minute."

And Astrid pulled Rose into a tight embrace and planted a kiss on the time traveller's lips, and deepened it when said lips opened in surprise. She broke off the kiss after a few seconds, smiling at a bewildered white-haired woman.

"Yeah, er… Very old tradition" Rose mumbled, blushing deeply. "I'll, er, send you off to the bridge" she added, disengaging herself and focusing on the teleport bracelet, which presently offered a very welcome distraction.

"I'll see you later" Astrid said once Rose was done, smiling radiantly, before vanishing in a sheath of light.

"I did _not_ see that one coming" the time traveller mumbled.

The door ahead of her opened, and one of the golden Hosts crossed through, its metallic voice repeating a litany of "Kill, kill, kill".

"Now that's familiar territory."

The Host grabbed the disc crowning its head and threw it towards the young woman, who ducked just in time.

"Hold on, hold on, override" she shouted, and then rolled out of the way of the returning disc. "Security protocol one, two, three, four, fi-"

"Override accepted" the Host made, stopping any hostile movement. "Information. State request."

"Okay, that's good" Rose made, getting back on her feet. "What are the highest authorities on board?"

"Information. Max Capricorn. The Bad Wolf."

"I'm one of the highest authorities?"

"Information. Correct."

"Fantastic." Rose groaned. "Should have just told the Doctor to ditch the adjective. Then again, I suppose he'll get there."

"Information. State your third question."

"Do I only get three questions?"

"Information. Correct. Your three questions have now been used."

The young woman face-palmed. "Stupid, stupid, stupid Rose, of course it counted as a question."

"Information." The statue readied its disc again. "Now you will die."

"Yeah, no, got other plans, me. Do you know what's my own security protocol one?" Rose said, taking her sonic out and applying it on her teleport bracelet.

"Information. Irrelevant. Your three questions have been used. Now you will die."

"I won't, because protocol one is always know how you're going to escape."

The young woman activated her bracelet, and found herself transported on a bridge that opened on a chasm which seemed to lead straight down to an open energy containment barrier. The bridge was wide-open and almost empty, save for retooling and powering stations, a couple of fork-lifts, and a thick-looking door with complex security controls on a far wall – and four Hosts who turned towards the newcomer.

"Information. Kill."

"Information. Override. Security protocol one" Rose replied in the same tone, and the four Hosts stood down.

"Override accepted. Information. State request."

"Take me to your leader."

"Information. This order contradicts another order from higher authority."

Rose smiled nervously. "Now we're getting somewhere, and I didn't even use an actual questions, just an order – and you will only answer my next question if that analysis is correct. Question: what order was my own order contradicting?"

"Information. Hosts are ordered to kill all crew and passengers, except for highest authority."

"Except I'm both. This very order contains a contradiction, and you can't resolve it on your own, so you've got to turn to the highest authority for clarification. So for the purposes of this order, you will exclusively categorize me as highest authority."

"Information. Order not acknowledged."

"Damn." Rose grimaced. "And how come you can't accept my orders despite me being highest authority?"

"Information. Bad Wolf is only second highest authority. Order comes from first highest authority."

"Meaning only the first highest authority can clarify how to interpret your order, which means I was right to ask in the first place: take me to your leader."

The Hosts gestured for Rose to take place in between them, which the young woman did with a grin. "And I did it with one question to spare. Am I good, or what?"

"Information. You are good."

Rose face-palmed again. "Twice, I did it twice."

"Information. Your three questions have now been used. Now we will take you to our leader."

"You know what? This sounds stupid when others say it."

The Hosts led her to the doors, which turned out to be extremely thick and doubled at the other end of a small hallway which had to also double as an airlock. The equally thick doors on the other hand were also opened by the Hosts, who then led her inside an overloaded space, filled with equipment of all sorts, a large part of which had been damaged after the collisions. It too opened on a deep chasm, which the young woman supposed also led down to an energy barrier. And at the far end, behind another set of doors…

Rose quirked her eyebrows. "Very nice. Omnistate impact chamber. Could sit through a supernova in one of those, certainly not going to be scratched by such a trifle as a multiple-core fusion explosion that only glasses a couple thousand square kilometres' worth of a planet's surface. And there's really only one person who could have the power and the money to get this thing on board and order the Hosts to make sure the ship crashes and nobody else survives, am I right?"

One of the Hosts pushed a command, and the final doors opened, letting out a cube-ish life support machine on wheels much taller than Rose herself, with the head of an old man Rose instantly recognized, down to the gilded tooth.

"Max Capricorn, I presume."

The head ignored her and addressed the Hosts directly. "Who is this?"

"Information. The Bad Wolf."

The head's eyes opened wide, then narrowed again, and the head's mouth curled into a cruel smile.

"No, she's not. The Bad Wolf was an incredibly beautiful and ageless woman with zero fashion sense from seven thousand years ago."

"You missed pink and purple chav with too much make-up and white-haired freakazoid dressed in black because she can't be bothered, for starters."

"And why would I care?" the head spat.

"Because they, and the version you know, are all me, Rose Tyler, sentient of varying genetic composition, also known as the Bad Wolf."

The head let out a grating laugh. "Oh, ho, ho. I like a woman of character. No one's stood up to me for years."

"Can't imagine why" Rose drawled.

"Don't push it" the head hissed. "I've run a company for a hundred and seventy-six years, I know how to put people down."

"Took its toll, you seem to be missing a few limbs" Rose said flippantly, earning herself a growl.

"Like I had another choice. I depend on a primitive life support system in a society that despises cyborgs. I've had to hide away for years, running the company by hologram."

"Poor billionaire Max, so lonely and unloved. I'm going to cry."

"Silence!" The head's attention turned back to the angel statues. "Host, situation report."

"Information. _Titanic_ is still in orbit" one of the Hosts reported.

"We should be plummeting to the surface by now – what's gone wrong?" The head turned around, and its expression turned alarmed. "The engines are still running! They should have stopped!"

"Sorry, my fault, gave Midshipman Frame a crash-course in hullabaloo" Rose grinned. "You were heading straight for a very densely populated capital city – twelve million dead, global economic upheaval, all on a level five planet. Would have made quite the scandal with the Shadow Proclamation."

"That was the point!" the head said angrily. "I wanted the scandal!"

Rose grimaced. "Sinking Max Capricorn Cruiseliners along with the _Titanic_. That doesn't make much sense, why sink your own business unless- oh!"

"Yes, my own board voted me out" the head growled. "When they found out what I am, they stabbed me in the back."

"Back of the head, and because you no longer have a back" Rose mumbled. "That's why you're looking to cause a catastrophe and are getting rid of all possible witnesses" she continued at a normal volume. "Such a disaster on a level five planet, bound to be an inquiry, and when they retrieve the black boxes they'll know it was deliberate. The whole company crashes, and the board get tarred with the scandal. You must even have a retrieval crew for after you've sat through the crash in your Omnistate. That's clever."

"Nobody gets away with slighting Max Capricorn."

"And I suppose that when this is all over, you make a mint over your former competitors' share prices soaring, go where they can make you a nice cyborg body and enjoy a nice retirement at some ideal vacation resort."

The head leered. "Penhaxico Two. Sunniest beaches in this arm of the galaxies, and I'm told the ladies there are very fond of metal."

Rose winced. "Really didn't need to know that."

"I could have offered you an exclusive deal rather than seek my chance with the local female population. You seem to be hiding very nice looks under the non-gendered clothes. But you're far too clever. All that banter, hiding you know exactly which buttons to push and when - I could never be sure I could control you, no matter how hot. So it's over for you now, Miss Rose Tyler."

"Is it?" Rose quirked her eyebrows. " _Titanic_ still hasn't sunk, has it?"

The head sneered. "I can cut the power from here. Free fall into the oceans. Less dramatic than crashing on a capital, but contaminates the entire ecosystem. So many more primitives dying. Oh, the scandal."

"You are not going to do this" Rose said icily.

"Oh ho? I don't see anyone here that can stop me."

"Yeah? Well let me tell you a little story, Max Capricorn. Once upon a time, there was this human girl. She'd fallen in love with the most beautiful person in the entire universe, a man hurting so much from the grief of having had to destroy everything he held dear, because the fabric of all of time and space themselves was threatened and his own people left him no other choice, and she decided she would never, ever leave this wonderful man alone."

"I don't see how your little sob story is going to change my mind, but by all means, go ahead" Max said with a sneer. "We're not trying for a pinpoint collision course any longer."

"There's a little bit more to this tale than a sob story" Rose replied with a scowl. "Because you see, the human girl was so desperate to save that incredible man, to make sure neither of them would ever leave the other behind, and so selfishly convinced that only she could do something, that she forged a connection with the Time Vortex itself, becoming a literal Goddess with the power to reshape anything, anywhere, anytime, in all of reality. And because by pure happenstance they were the closest words with power behind them lying around where her presence was centred, the human girl made Goddess took those words as inspiration and called herself the Bad Wolf."

"I still don't see why I should care about any of this or how it's supposed to convince me to save the _Titanic_ " the head growled.

"I'm getting there. Because, you see, there was this other, very selfish alien, a Time Lord of incredible intelligence but driven insane by the constant pounding of the drums in their head. He took notice of what the foolish human girl had done, of the changes that had happened to her that made it possible for her to endure a connection with a source of power of such magnitude it would have destroyed anyone else in a matter of seconds. So the Time Lord captured the girl and transformed her, mutilating her, reengineering her biology and creating a portal inside her head, which could be opened at any time he could force the girl to, restoring her ability to connect with the Time Vortex and erase anything she wanted erased from existence.

"That's what this has to do with convincing you to save the _Titanic_ " Rose said, her eyes bursting into golden light. "I'm the Bad Wolf, that selfish creature with God-scale power over all of time and space, and I'm telling you, right now, that either your plans to crash this ship into the Earth are going to cease to exist or you will."

"Rose, please don't!"

The light went out of the Bad Wolf's eyes, and Rose turned towards where the shout had come from. It was Astrid Peth, driving one of the fork lifts the time traveller had noticed earlier.

"You called me Rose..."

Max Capricorn's head also turned in her direction, and he let out a grating laugh. "See? Even my personnel want my scheme to succeed."

"This has nothing to do with you" Astrid said angrily. "This is me not wanting the only person I've got left hating herself for what she was about to do to you!"

"Astrid, don't!" Rose cried out, at the same time as Max's head shouted a loud "Hosts! Kill them!"

But the Hosts didn't kill Rose immediately. Two of her seized her arms, while a third came in from behind her and forced her onto her knees, stopping her from interfering as Astrid rammed the fork lift into Max Capricorn's heavy life support machinery. Two engines roared to life as both struggle to push the other machine back.

"Duck!"

The fourth Host had just launched its halo at the waitress, who barely got out of its way after hearing Rose's warning. The deadly implement cut through some controls in a shower of sparks, and suddenly the fork lift seemed to get the upper hand.

The disc flew back to its owner, and the fork lift displaced Max Capricorn's machine, pushing it against some of the heavier clutter and causing it to overturn just enough that the fork lift's arms slid under its wheels.

"Astrid!" Rose cried out again as Max Capricorn's blocky was lifted, and the fork lift pushed past the obstacle, headed straight for the chasm.

Rose was desperate enough to let out the Wolf, but before she could, she saw the waitress' face, leaning outside of the cab, her eyes locked onto the time traveller's and her mouth saying words the Time-Lord augmented senses could filter underneath the engines' roars.

"Don't be the Bad Wolf. Be Rose Tyler. I love her, forever."

"ASTRID!"

The Hosts held her down, and there was nothing Rose could do but watch as both machines crashed through the thin guard rails and toppled into the chasm along with Astrid Peth and Max Capricorn.

And Rose knew the exact moment it was over. At that precise instant, the Hosts loosed their hold, and one of them spoke.

"Information. Awaiting orders."

Rose ignored them for an instant, walking over to the guard rail, and letting out silent tears as she watched down where an impossibly brave woman from Sto had just died, not to save her life, but so Rose herself would not lose control and destroy another.

"What the hell must I be turning into, that you felt you had to die to stop that?" Rose said, her voice catching in her throat.

But there wasn't any time for mourning at the moment. The ship's computer made that painfully clear in one of those impersonal announcements only computer voices could deliver: "Engines disconnected. Titanic falling. Voyage terminated."

"Not if I have anything to say about it" Rose growled as she whirled around, and her next words were yelled. "Hosts! Spread around the whole ship! Order the attacks to stop! Help all the survivors!"

And with a raging gesture, she whipped out her sonic screwdriver and activated the teleport bracelet again, flashing herself to the bridge. She arrived just in the nick of time to see one injured man fighting for his life against two Hosts which apparently had crashed through the bridge's doors.

"Hosts, stand down!" she snapped. "And you too spread around the ship and order all other Hosts to stop attacking and to help any survivors!"

The Hosts let go of the man they'd been about to kill. "Information. Orders received."

The angelic statues left the bridge, leaving behind a bewildered man trying to catch his breath and a cold Rose Tyler, the handle of her sonic drumming against her teleport bracelet.

"Midshipman Frame, I presume" she said unemotionally.

"Yeah" the man said hoarsely. "Who are you? How come the Hosts are obeying you?"

"We talked earlier. I'm the Bad Wolf. Where are the engine controls?"

"Console over there", and the midshipman nodded in that direction, "but they aren't working. They're stating only the highest authority can make any input."

"Convenient." Rose pocketed her sonic and strode towards the console she'd been showed. "Get yourself to steerage, we're redirecting course. Is your ship still viable enough to get to the closest space dock?"

"There's a hyperspace ribbon starting just outside the heliosphere."

"Fantastic" Rose replied in a tone that said it was anything but. " _Allons-y_ , Midshipman Frame."

"Alonso" the man said from the post he'd taken at the wheel, and Rose stopped imputing commands to turn and give him a look of disbelief.

"Seriously?"

"I'll pilot the _Titanic_ back to dock, but I'm resigning the moment we touch down."

"No, seriously, your first name is Alonso?"

"What of it?"

Rose sighed. "Nevermind." She returned her attention to the engine controls. "There, you have power. Can you activate communications?"

The midshipman nodded and pressed a few commands by the wheel. "Here you go."

"Hosts, this is the Bad Wolf. Override: clear all existing orders. New orders: save and help any survivors on board. Instruction: from now on, your second highest authority is Alonso Frame. Over."

The midshipman cut the communications. He was now looking at Rose with awe. "You truly are the Bad Wolf" he said with reverence. "The genuine article."

"I'm really not sure I want to be" Rose replied grimly. "Astrid Peth just died so I wouldn't have to."

"She's dead?"

"It was Max Capricorn who was trying to sink the _Titanic_. She sacrificed herself to stop him. All of the survivors on this ship owe her their lives."

"There's thirty-four people left alive on board" the midshipman said quietly. Ahead of him, the viewports shaded as the ship steered in a direction that made the sun cross their lines of sight.

Rose made a noncommittal noise. "How many were there when you left port?"

"Two thousand four hundred and one."

Another grunt, and an uncomfortable silence, which Rose eventually broke. "Mind if I keep the teleport bracelet?" she asked quietly.

"Not at all" the man said.

"Good, because I saw earlier my cabin was part of the section that got smashed, which means my ship must have homed in on the nearest habitable planet – that's Earth."

The man had a small chuckle. "Your ship was on board? What were you, a stowaway?"

"Actually, for once, I had a legit ticket – just got no idea where it came from."

The midshipman snorted. "That would explain the whimsicality in the legends of the Bad Wolf."

Rose couldn't help feel a bit curious. "There's legends about me on Sto?"

"There's history about you on Sto. A tradition, too, dating all the way back from Queen Vot: be it in government or in businesses, or anything with a hierarchy, the Bad Wolf is always named as the second highest authority."

The young woman had a humourless chuckle. "Figures. Don't tell me anything else, hasn't happened for me."

* * *

Rose didn't have the heart to return to see Wilf that night back on Earth. She couldn't face having to explain to the kind and enthusiastic old man why Astrid no longer was with her, let alone talk about what had just happened before reconciling just how it was possible for a young woman who had just met her to have sacrificed her life out of love for her, and not even to save Rose's life. Just to stop her from using the powers of the Bad Wolf.

"But why?"

And there was no one in the slowly re-animating streets of London who could have answered.

She followed the link still connecting her with her time and space ship, and found her version of the TARDIS in the very same side street where she had once picked Martha up. It had only been some months ago in linear time, but with how much Rose had changed since then, even from the human with slight huon-infused powers, it might as well have been forever. The memories of that young woman – not Martha, who had suffered but was still human, but the memories of herself, the blonde girl full of life and playing a cheap time travel trick with her pink headband – only added to the bitterness and melancholy Rose was feeling on what was pretty much her worst Christmas ever.

The TARDIS seemed to have tuned to that mood, her lighting dimmed and her humming quieter than usual as Rose made her way back inside. The young woman walked straight to the console, leaning her hands on one of its boards and letting out a deep sigh, closing her eyes.

"Rose."

She jumped. It was impossible that she was hearing that voice, the voice of her first Doctor. And yet…

She turned around slowly, and when she saw that the voice had only come from a holographic projection by the door, she didn't know how to feel about the Doctor not being there.

The projection gave her a little smile, and spoke with the painfully familiar northern burr. "I never got the chance to say all of this, so I programmed this message while our time streams still coincided closely enough that I haven't yet forgotten. I hope it's not coming at the worst possible timing, but I couldn't think of another."

"You've never been good at timing no matter your regeneration, Doctor" Rose muttered, but she had a small, crooked half-smile playing on her lips.

The hologram went on. "You've met other versions of me before, so I have some idea of when this is in your timeline, and I wanted to say I'm sorry for all that happened to you. We've barely spent time together, and I haven't even met you properly for the first time in your own timeline, but I already know you're absolutely unique, utterly wonderful, and one of the most beautiful souls existing in this universe, even broken as you are now feeling." The Doctor's image grinned in a way that sent a pang through Rose's heart. "Even hurting as much as I am right now, I wouldn't be surprised if I end up falling in love with you within weeks of properly meeting you, even if I don't remember all you've already done for me later on in your timeline."

"But I never got to hear you say you love me even once" Rose whispered, not remembering she in fact had.

The TARDIS hummed, sending the telepathic equivalent of a hug, and Rose felt a deep sentiment of gratefulness for her space and time ship. She thanked the old girl silently as she went on watching the Doctor's message.

"I also wanted to thank you" the hologram was saying with another bitter-sweetly familiar smile. "On behalf of the people you saved first by not staying stuck with me. You were right to send me away, it would have taken me a couple of hours to return to more or less operational function and it would have been too late, the Titanic would have already crashed on London. You and me, we'd have survived, but not the rest of them."

"Did save the people here, but on the _Titanic_ it was less than one in sixty" Rose mumbled.

"And I wanted to thank you for being there at this exact moment in my life" the hologram Doctor added, this time with no trace of a smile. "I was crashing down badly, had no idea where I was going, and hearing your version of the TARDIS materialize gave me a lifeline, somewhere to go where I could find someone to help me through the very first realization of what I've just done, and that it's all real. I've survived that, and it's all thanks to you. It's still going to be horrible having to live with that, but you started me on it slowly getting better."

The Doctor's 'I'm alright' smile followed. "I'm not going to remember you helped me at my worst, but I know it's going to make me subconsciously want to confide in you. I hope I won't make you want to run away, what with how hard it's going to hit me that I'm the last of the Time Lords, that there isn't anybody left in my head, not even you, and that I'm now alone."

"And I'll tell you you're not when you bring it up, I'll offer comfort and say there's me" Rose whispered, a tear rolling silently down her cheek.

"I also know what's going on in your head, and I'm so sorry, there's nothing I can do" the Doctor stated, adding a little more to Rose's sadness. "But that doesn't mean no one can. I've programmed some coordinates for when this message is done playing. They'll take you to Karn. It's one of the few allied worlds to Gallifrey that survived the Time War. Look for Ohila. She's ancient, and not a trustworthy person – most of the Sisterhood aren't – but she can teach you to block your telepathic projections, and she will be desperate to. Too many people would want to lay their hands on you and try to extract your power if they could hear what's going on in your head, Ohila will want to prevent any chance of that happening."

"Yeah, one Master was enough" Rose said bitterly.

"One last thing" the Doctor said seriously. "People like me and you, we are different from the rest of the universe. We live longer. We endure more. We sense a lot more. We are cleverer. And whether because of our skills, knowledge or innate abilities, and because we can tamper with time, we've got a lot more power. We can literally decide who will live or die."

"I know we can."

"And we must not. Everything has its time and everything dies, and we must refrain from tampering with that. We feel like Gods, and at times it's almost true, or we know how to actually make that true, but we can't do that. It's because we can that we must never allow ourselves to decide who will live or die. When we do, there's nothing that can stop us, and we become real monsters. That's who the Time Lords became, deciding who had a right to exist or not in all of creation. That's why I had to stop them."

"And that's why Astrid sacrificed herself" Rose whispered, tears now flowing freely. "I'm the supernatural being with powers over time and space, and I didn't realize. She was just an ordinary waitress, but she understood that."

Distantly, Rose had registered the Doctor's holographic presence stating it had reached the end of its message.

"But before I go and forget all of this" the Doctor was saying when she caught on, "I wanted to say one more thing", and he grinned again, triggering yet more tears. "Rose Tyler, you are fantastic."

The hologram vanished, and Rose let out a sob. "And you know what, Doctor? So are you."

Rose sat down on the floor, back resting on the console, and hugged her knees to herself, burying her face in them. And the young woman cried, just like the Doctor had in her arms only a few hours before, mourning all that she and he had lost, with the TARDIS doing what she could to comfort her.

* * *

 _To be continued…_

* * *

 **A/N:** We're reaching the end of the "inter-season". One intermission coming, going back to New York, and then it's onwards to _Partners in Crime_. Want to write me some Donna Noble!

 **RizkyBiznoose** , glad to have time to write again, and that so many of you are still reading! :)

 **Owlqueen08** , er, surprised? ^^ Hope you didn't mind Nine getting less "screentime". I'm not done with him (!), he'll be back before this season ends.

 **ELinkA** , thanks again for the kind words! Damn, that's beginning to be a long read, and I'm not even a quarter of the way done…

, sorry, non-English speaker here as well. If anyone else wondered, Twelve and Rose are still together in his timeline, although you might have guessed he's Twelve from right after _Kill the Moon_. Who knows what 1,100+ years old Rose thought about that one?...

 **nrynmrth** , damn, now I have to try and stay on the same level xD Thanks for the kind words, and hope you enjoyed this one.

 **LadyHopeofGallifrey** , thanks for all your reviews, and welcome on board! Oh, and can I steal "Donna Luppa"? :D

Thanks to you all for reading. And if you've enjoyed this, please leave a review!


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